ACCORDING to the decree of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church "On the procedure for Opening Churches", approved by the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR on November 28, 1943,1 the starting point of the process of opening a church for worship services was the petitions of believers who applied to various state and church authorities regarding the transfer of a religious building to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. All the written petitions of believers for a particular church formed a single "case", and when there were several petitions for one church, the arguments given by believers in them were recognized by the authorities as relevant, the set of documents was handed over to the commissioner, who submitted materials to the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, which until 1955.2 decided to transfer the church to the jurisdiction of the diocese. If there were no petitions from the faithful about the need to provide them with a church for worship, then, according to the legislation on cults, even if there was a request from the diocesan authorities, the work of the authorities to open the church did not begin.3
1. Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of November 28, 1943 "On the order of opening churches" / / GARF. F. R. -5446. Op. 1. D. 221. L. 4.

2. Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 259 of February 17, 1955 "On changing the procedure for opening Prayer buildings"//Ibid. d. 638. l. 67.

3. Instructions of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Plenipotentiaries. Approved By the Council on August 26, 1945/ / RGASPI. F. 17. Op. 132. D. 110. L. 56. Section 1. 11. 1.

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In the instructions drawn up for the commissioners of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1945, it was determined that the commissioner, after receiving the petitions of believers, had to check their authenticity: the main information was about the initiators of the petitions. The authorities were interested in the number of representatives of the initiative group, the interests of which number of believers they represent, their professional and age composition, as well as information about the arguments that believers give when asking to open a particular church4. The information obtained from the petitions was important for the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church Affairs Council, since by the number of petitions and signatures of believers under them, it was possible to track the periods of activity of believers and "hotbeds of activity" - the places where most petitions came from in the country or region, and take the necessary measures to prevent the growth of discontent among believers parts of the population. Having received information about the age and professional composition of the initiators of the opening of churches and potential parishioners, the authorities made a conclusion about how much the church requested for opening is really necessary, and whether the faithful are able to repair the church building on their own.

Of particular interest in studying the petitions of believers for the opening of churches in Leningrad were the arguments they presented to achieve a positive result. It was also important to establish how their letters affected the opening of specific churches and why some of them were ignored by the authorities. Letters from believers to various authorities are not only a valuable source for studying state-church relations, but also give an idea of the believers themselves, as representatives of post-war society, their value orientations and the degree of their trust in the authorities during the 1940s and 1950s.

It should be noted that" letters to the authorities " as a special kind of source have recently attracted the close interest of researchers, 5 but practically did not become the object of special research.-

4. Ibid.

5. Letters to the authorities. 1928 - 1939. Applications, complaints, denunciations, letters to state structures and Soviet leaders. Moscow, 2002; The tragedy of the Soviet village: Collectivization and dekulakization. 1927-1939: documents and materials. In 5 vols. Vol. 1. Moscow, 1999; Vol. 2. Moscow, 2000; The supply crisis of 1939-1941 in the letters of Soviet people//Questions of history. 1996. N 1. pp. 3-23.

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for further study. Despite the fact that researchers of the history of the church of the Soviet period-M. V. Shkarovsky, M. N. Odintsov and others-repeatedly included some petitions of believers to state authorities in their thematic collections of documents, however, the letters they published mostly related to a different time period, which is outside the chronological framework of this work.

The source of the study was a set of letters from Leningrad believers in 1943-1958, which contained petitions for the opening of various city churches in Leningrad. These letters are kept in the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (TSGA SPb) and the archive of the St. Petersburg Diocese (EASPb). It is important that the letters stored in these two archives had different addressees - state bodies or their representatives who controlled the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Leningrad, and the diocesan authorities. Accordingly, one of the tasks was to identify differences in petitions sent to different recipients.

Each addressee was waiting for the authorities 'response to their request, or at least their response, but since the response letters of the authorities' representatives were almost not preserved in the archives, it was important to find out how effective the requests for the transfer of churches to the faithful were in general.

Of course, the question of the authorship of letters was important, the solution of which helped to determine the circle of people who initiated their writing and sending, since when selecting "voices from the choir", it is possible to show the reactions of specific representatives of Soviet society to the most significant events in the religious life of the city and the country as a whole. Therefore, an attempt was made to create a list of motives and arguments with which believers tried to influence the authorities, achieving a positive result.

The material for the study was also letters sent to the highest state administration bodies of the Russian Orthodox Church - to the Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Commissioner for Leningrad and the Leningrad region, and to the diocesan administration - to the Metropolitan's office. In the process of studying the petitions, it was found that letters to state authorities and management structures of the Russian Orthodox Church relate mainly to 1944-1945. This was due to the fact that it was during these years, anticipating the proximity of victory in the Great Ota-

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Expecting a change in state policy towards the church, the faithful began to show initiative and perseverance, demanding that the authorities return the closed churches of the diocese.

In order to get a clearer picture of how churches were opened in Leningrad and the Leningrad region during this period, let's turn to statistics. M. V. Shkarovsky gives the following data for the whole country for 1944-1945: in 1944, state authorities received 6,702 applications, and in 1945, another 5,986 applications for the opening of 4,292 churches. Of these, 716 were satisfied, or only about 17 %. As of June 1, 1945, according to the calculations of the Russian Orthodox Church Affairs Council, the total number of active churches of the Patriarchate was 10,243, including 6,072 in Ukraine, 2,297 in the RSFSR, and they were distributed very unevenly (in the central regions - 400-500, in the autonomous republics and regions of Siberia, the Far East and the Volga region). the number did not exceed 2-4) 6. Asking the question about the reasons for the small number of churches returned to believers, the author of the work "The Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev" comes to the conclusion that the "top" state authorities did not seek to make decisions about the opening of churches. The authorities were afraid that by giving "slack" they would not be able to stop the process of" churching " Soviet workers. It is for this reason that in one of the conversations in November 1943 with the chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, G. Karpov, V. Molotov pointed out: "Do not give any permission to open churches yet... In the future, the issue of opening to apply for a sanction to the government and only then send instructions to the regional executive committees... It will be necessary to open churches in some places, but it will be necessary to restrain the solution of this issue."7. Due to this policy of the state, only on February 5, 1944, the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a resolution on the official opening of the first 18 churches. 8 This is probably why Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad and Novgorod on the petitions of the faithful of Leningrad before the beginning of the-

Shkarovsky M. V. 6. Russkaya Pravoslavnaya tserkva pri Staline i Khrushchev [Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev], Moscow, 1999, p. 215.

Shkarovsky M. V.7 . Russkaya Pravoslavnaya tserkva pri Stalinu i Khrushchev [Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev], p. 207. 8. Ibid.

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The law of 1944 passed a resolution: "now it is not timely to initiate a petition for the opening of the church." 9
Representatives of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, at least in relation to the churches of the Leningrad Diocese, acted together: The Leningrad Diocese had a special "local" decision-making system regarding the return of religious buildings to the faithful, and there was a "backstage" mechanism for transmitting petitions from the metropolitan to the authorized representative of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Leningrad and the Leningrad region. This "mechanism" consisted in the fact that before initiating a petition for the opening of a church, the metropolitan, having received a request from the faithful, first resolved all issues with the commissioner, and only if a consensus was established, the latter referred the case to the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church. The commissioner himself, analyzing the well-established mechanism of working with petitions of believers, said the following: "... when we decide to open a church, he [the metropolitan] writes a written petition, but in the same cases when we do not think of opening a church, he does not write such a petition. Therefore, I have not had a single case of refusal, and we do not make decisions on them, since the metropolitan himself decides these issues. The decisions that he supports were all satisfied. " 10 From the commissioner's report, we learn that in the Leningrad Diocese, the role of the metropolitan in the transfer of churches was significant and without his resolution, petitions sent to the chancellery were not transferred to the Council. This fact explains the reason why the Metropolitan's office has many petitions for the return of churches, and the archive of the commissioner A. Kushnarev and the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church contains only a small part of them.

The opinion about the important role of the metropolitan in the opening of churches was supported by representatives of state authorities: This can probably be explained by their desire, if it is impossible to obtain government permission to open the church, to hold the metropolitan and representatives of the diocese responsible for the failure.

Before presenting the results of studying the petitions of the faithful for the return of churches in the Leningrad Diocese, please refer to-

9. Petition of A. M. Nekhorosheva to Metropolitan Alexy about the opening of the chapel of Xenia the Blessed. 3. Op. 11. d. 50. L. 2.

10. Stenogram of the meeting of the Plenipotentiaries of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church on July 20-22, 1946 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 104.

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Let's turn to the question of the number of active churches in the city to understand which churches and in which districts of Leningrad the faithful asked to open.

Prior to July 1, 1945, A. N. Kushnarev, the Commissioner for the Russian Orthodox Church in Leningrad and the region, received 53 applications requesting the opening of churches, including only 10 in Leningrad. Only 6 positive decisions were made on them: 5 churches were opened in the Leningrad region and 1 in Leningrad (Holy Trinity Church, Kulich and Paskha). In total, by this time, there were 50 churches in the city and region, 42 of them in the region and 8 in Leningrad 11.

It should be noted that in other regions of the North-West of Russia, judging by the reports of local commissioners, the relationship between them and the diocesan authorities was different, and often not the bishops, but the commissioners made the decision to open the church, and the church authorities had only to make this decision. When asked what was best for the diocese - the confrontation between secular and ecclesiastical authorities or their joint decision-making, as in the Leningrad diocese, you should pay attention to statistics: the percentage of churches returned in the regions was almost the same, but there were fewer difficulties in relations between the commissioner, clergy and believers in Leningrad, than in other dioceses.

Speaking about the churches of Leningrad, it should be noted that during the war there were 8 of the most important churches of the city for believers, among which we should mention the Transfiguration of the Savior, Prince Vladimir, St. Nicholas-Epiphany, in which services continued to be held in the post-war years. In addition, many districts of Leningrad had their own church, and the Commissioner for the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church himself, A. A. Kolesnikov. 11. Kushnarev admitted that he only supported applications to open churches from those areas where there were no churches, and there were 4 such areas in Leningrad in 1945 (17 in the region) .12 In addition, in 1946-1947, it was allowed to hold services in those churches that believers most often visited. they asked to open it - in the chapel of Xenia the Blessed, which is a symbol of" Leningrad Orthodoxy " and in churches in remote parts of the city - in the Church of the Holy Trinity

11. Stenogram of the meeting of the Plenipotentiaries of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church on July 20-22, 1946 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 104.

12. Ibid.

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on Obukhovskaya Oborona Avenue and Smolenskaya Church in the cemetery, which was the only church on Vasilyevsky Island until the return of the Chapel of St. Xenia to the faithful. Other churches that believers asked to be provided for worship services were not handed over for several reasons.

One of the most common arguments of the authorities ' refusal to return the church to the diocese was the ruling that the building of the former church was not suitable for holding services: either it was badly destroyed or rebuilt and could not be restored, 13 or it required huge funds for its restoration, which neither the diocese nor the faithful had. 14 The main reason why the metropolitans refused to hand over the documents on the opening of the church to the authorized representative of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was that there was a functioning church a few kilometers away from the church that was asked to be opened for worship. The metropolitan and deans were concerned that if the faithful formed two parishes, both churches would soon have to be closed, because the parishioners would not be able to maintain the buildings properly due to lack of funds.15 The city authorities justified their refusal on the grounds that many former places of worship in the 1940s and 1950s were managed by various organizations, including "cultural" ones, and were kept in "proper condition", and the authorities "found no reason to refuse them to operate these structures"16.

13. For example, in 1946, the Tikhvin Church on the territory of the Krestovozvizhenskaya Church complex on Litovsky Prospekt was declared unsuitable for worship by the Dean, as 2/5 of the buildings were destroyed by shelling//The case of the opening of the Tikhvin Church on the territory of the former St. John the Baptist (Holy Cross) Church. 1946/ / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11. d. 46. l. 2.

14. The bell tower of the Holy Cross Church and the chapel located next to it could not be restored (their repair was estimated by the commission at about 3 million rubles), and as a result, the believers were denied their request to repair the buildings//Report of the Dean to Metropolitan Gregory//Ibid., l. 5.

15. For this reason, Metropolitan Eleutherius was forced to refuse a group of believers applying for the opening of a church in honor of the Holy Trinity in Ozerki, due to the fact that the Church of the Saviour of Pargolovo was operating nearby, which was experiencing financial difficulties due to low attendance//Report of the Dean of the city district Archpriest N. Lomakin to the Metropolitan. 1956/ / Ibid. d. 61. l. 2.

16. Such reasons were given, in particular, when the Church of the Resurrection of Christ on the Griboyedov Canal, where the scenery of the Maly Opera House was stored, and the Sampsonievsky Cathedral, which in the first post-war years belonged to the Academy of Sciences, and then was converted into a warehouse for the wholesale and purchasing base of the Glavunivermag, were refused to be handed over to the faithful. The case of the opening of the Church of the Resurrection

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There were, of course, ideological reasons. So, the authorities refused to open a church that was in the past a "hotbed of counter-revolution" - for example, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ on the Griboyedov Canal (Spas on Spilled Blood)17, which in the 1940s and 1950s, in their opinion, could again gather "anti-socialist forces". In addition, this temple was a monument to the emperor, which should not attract public attention. They did not seek to open churches in the city center either, so as not to show a huge number of believers who would flock to the open church, which could make the "working people" doubt the truthfulness of the slogans of official propaganda, that religion in the Soviet country is a "dying phenomenon".

To analyze the religious situation in Leningrad in the second half of the 1940s and 1950s, data on existing churches and those mentioned in petitions were compared by district (the current names of the city's districts will be used later).

On the Vyborg side, believers asked to open 2 churches-Sampsonievsky Cathedral and Trinity Church 18, located at the intersection of modern Grazhdansky Prospekt with Nepokorennykh Avenue, and also asked to build a church at the Theological Cemetery. The old cemetery church, consecrated in honor of St. John the Theologian, was closed and demolished in 1938,19 and the chapel located on the territory of the cemetery became the only religious building on the Vyborg side, where until the end of the period under study there was not a single functioning church (this information is confirmed by the memories of the blockade participant E. A. Skobeleva, who 20), and this fact explains why it was the believers of the Vyborg side who were most active.

On Vasilyevsky Island, where there was also no functioning church, they asked to open St. Andrew's Cathedral, the church and the chapel of Xenia the Blessed in the Smolensk Cemetery. The last one-

on blood. 1958 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11. D. 49. Ll. 1-4; The case of the opening of the Sampson Cathedral. 1948-1959. / / Ibid. Op. 11a. D. 13. Ll. 2-10; Archive of the State Inspectorate for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments of St. Petersburg. Sampsonievsky Cathedral. 28 / Pr-4-1958

Yudin N. 11.17 . Pravda o peterburgskikh svyatynyakh [The Truth about St. Petersburg Shrines], L., 1966, p. 125.

18. The Trinity Church was demolished in 1967 due to the expansion of Grazhdansky Prospekt//Lntonov V. V., Kobak A.V. Svyatyny Peterburg [The Holy Places of St. Petersburg]. Vol. 3. SPb., 1996, P. 124.

19. Ibid., p. 166.

Skobeleva E. A. 20. Rodina moi detstva [The motherland of my childhood]. 1940-1945-St. Petersburg, 2004. p. 14.

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They were returned to the diocese in 1946-1948, when complaints began to be heard that the Prince Vladimir Cathedral, the only church on the Petrograd side that also received Vasileostrovites, did not have enough space for worshippers.

There was one functioning church on the right bank of the Neva River (the Church of St. Nicholas in the Bolsheokhtinsky cemetery, and the faithful asked to open another cemetery church-the Church of Mary Magdalene in the Malookhtinsky churchyard) and on the Malaya Neva-the church in the Seraphim Cemetery, in the current area of Novaya Derevnya, from which they did not receive requests for the opening of churches, including and because of the sparsely populated area.

In the Central district of the city, despite the fact that the main number of active churches was located here (4 out of 8: St. Nicholas, Spaso-Preobrazhensky, Vladimir cathedrals and the Church of St. Job at the Volkovsky cemetery), believers also asked to open the Church of the Resurrection of Christ (Spas on Blood)21, Kazan Cathedral 22 and churches of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra 23. It is important to note that these petitions were individual, not collective. In addition, these churches were asked to be opened not to increase the territory where services could be held, but as architectural and historical monuments, "Orthodox shrines", symbols of Leningrad, and the Kazan Cathedral - as "a building built and standing in the center of our city, [which] should protect honor, peace and freedom." our cities and countries " 24. This fact, of course, is of interest: other churches in Leningrad were asked to be opened primarily for divine services, despite the fact that they are also architectural monuments of the XVIII and XIX centuries. (information about this is found in petitions for the opening of the Sampson and St. Andrew Cathedrals in the form of references that these are buildings "remembering Peter I"). In petitions for churches in the center of Leningrad, the main arguments are "historical", although this is the main problem.-

Yudin N. 11.21 . Pravda o peterburgskikh svyatynyakh [The Truth about St. Petersburg shrines]. p. 2.

22. L. N. Kruglova's letter to the Patriarch about the opening of the Kazan Cathedral. 1949 / / EASPb. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 18. L. 1-3. Here and further, the spelling and punctuation of the originals are preserved.

23. A. M. Frolova's report to Patriarchal Locum Tenens Alexy on the opening of churches of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 5-6.

24. L. N. Kruglova's letter to the Patriarch about the opening of the Kazan Cathedral. 1949 / / EASPb. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 18. L. 2.

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There was a large number of parishioners in the existing churches in the district, but not a word was said about this in these letters. There was a problem with the fact that the churches in the city center could not accommodate those who wanted to, and there are references to this in petitions from other parts of the city. Thus, the petition for the return of the Sampsonievsky Cathedral stated that since the Transfiguration Cathedral, which is located on the opposite bank of the Neva River, is the closest for residents of the Vyborg side, at a remote distance and is constantly crowded on Sundays and holidays, many believers are unable to attend services due to their advanced age, which makes it difficult to travel a long way.25 Believers living in the Vasileostrovsky district also complained that "St. Nicholas Cathedral and St. Vladimir's Cathedral are always crowded with worshippers, their visits are associated with tram rides, and therefore they often have to refuse to attend church"26.

In addition, if churches in other districts of Leningrad were requested to be opened by "local" residents, residents of houses near a closed church, and their requests, most often collective, were justified and specific, then churches in the central district were requested to be opened by believers living at a distance from them27 or near the place of residence of which there was a functioning church28.

It is also interesting that letters about the return of temples in the city center contain almost no specific information about the state of the temple, what organization it is currently occupied by and for what purposes it is used. At the same time,

25. Statement of the faithful of the Stalinsky (Vyborg) district to Metropolitan Grigory about the opening of the Sampsonievsky Cathedral. 1946/ / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 13. L. 2, 8.

26. Letter from residents of Vasilyevsky Island to Metropolitan Gregory about the opening of St. Andrew's Cathedral. 1947/ / Ibid. Op. 11. d. 52. l. 4.

27.For example, P. M. Makarov, who lives on Staro-Pargolovsky Avenue (the current name is Maurice Thorez Avenue), asked that the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood be returned to the faithful. Letter from P. M. Makarov to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia on the opening of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. 1959 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11. D. 49. L. 4.

28. L. N. Kruglova, who lives in Apraksina Pereulok, asked for the return of the Kazan Cathedral to the faithful, and two believers-neighbors of the house on 2 Sovetskaya Street, near whose residence there was an active Vladimir Cathedral, and not far from Preobrazhensky - wrote to Locum Tenens Alexy about the temples of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra//L. Kruglova's letter to the Patriarch about the opening of the Kazan Cathedral. 1949 / / Ibid. d. 18. L. 1.; Report to the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod on the opening of the churches of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. Ll. 5-6.

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unlike other petitions, these letters are characterized by greater exaltation and pretentiousness of speech turns. In this regard, petitions for the opening of the Kazan Cathedral and the Lavra churches are particularly indicative. Thus, the petition of L. N. Kruglova begins with the words of prayer: "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Amen. By the grace of our God, Orthodox people, I run to you for help, I am a small Creation of God, who has great faith and love for the Lord. " 29 It is important to note here that Lyudmila Kruglova sends the Metropolitan three almost identical messages-to the Metropolitan himself, with a request to make public to the faithful of Leningrad her appeal (the text is attached to her letter) to write a letter personally to I. V. Stalin (the text is also attached) with a request to open the Kazan Cathedral. The quintessence of the idea of a believer is a letter to I. V. Stalin, the text of which, as an example of an "extraordinary message" in a series of other, more realistic ones, it will be appropriate to quote: "Dear, Comrade. Stalin, we Orthodox Christians of Leningrad, knowing your sincere kindness to humanity, as well as to each individual, accepting your teaching about freedom of Conscience and freedom of religion, as well as knowing about the true freedom that you have given to our country, which is valid and unique in the world, write and send you a request for permission to open the Internet. for us believers, the Kazan Cathedral is a place of prayer, because it was built by a people who are as Orthodox and faithful as we are, to the Queen of Heaven, to whose prayer, for our country, for all mankind, we Christians now attach special importance. Please do not refuse our request. " 30 It should be pointed out that this letter was written not in wartime, but in 1949, and that this letter among the documents we found is the only one addressed to J. V. Stalin, although, most likely, there were similar letters in the archives of J. V. Stalin. Kruglova's petitions were filed by the Metropolitan's office in the case "On the opening of the Kazan Cathedral". Like the petition for the opening of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, this is the second (of the few similar) letter that mentions that the metropolitan should apply to the government. Prokopiy Makarovich Makarov, with "the appearance of a sense of nervousness towards God's temple," wrote to Patriarch Alexy in 1958 as follows:: "Ask for it-

29. L. Kruglova's letter to the Patriarch about the opening of the Kazan Cathedral. 1949 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 18. L. 3.

30. Ibid.

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ti of the Chairman of the Ministers, com. Khrushchev and through all his government for the right to open this Holy Temple, and I ask the government's decision to inform me at the following address.. " 31.

The letter about the opening of the churches of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra is not a request, but a project, the author of which was a certain V. V. Malygin 32. Simultaneously with his project in June 1944.A letter was sent to the Patriarch by Malygin's neighbor, A. M. Frolova, which was called a "Memo"33. The draft and A. M. Frolova's letter are quite detailed, so we will limit ourselves to just mentioning the main ideas set out in them. According to the project, it was supposed to "completely remove the Lavra from public private use" (this means evicting all tenants of the premises), and since "there are many followers and zealots of believers in the true God, in 3 years with confidence the Lavra can be restored according to plan." Despite the fact that a" clear "plan was attached, some of its points could not be called realistic (for example, to give the laurel " N-th number of bee pads to have its own wax, and also need tax exemption for 5 years") and its implementation in three years seemed doubtful, especially since the " project"dated June 1944. It is necessary to pay tribute to the author: some of his ideas were interesting and relevant - to open a house for disabled people of war and labor in the premises of the lavra, to organize various workshops (which was done at the present time), but in general the project was not realistic, and, in addition, for "science-like" ("To organize a council of competent persons on economic restoration of all Lavra repairs") and with the constant refrain "tax exemption" after each point, the essence of the author's ideas sometimes slips away. The significance of this letter lies in the fact that it, transmitted to the commissioner as part of the case on the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, along with other petitions, was the "critical mass" of petitions that later became one of the reasons for the opening of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Lavra.

Summing up a certain review of the "territorial" aspect of petitions, it should be emphasized that most of all petitions

31. Letter of P. M. Makarov to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia on the opening of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. 1959 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11. D. 49. L. 4.

32. Reconstruction project of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 6.

33. Report to the Patriarchal Locum Tenens, Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod//Ibid., l. 7.

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The opening of churches was sent to various authorities by residents of the Vyborg (Stalinsky) and Vasileostrovsky districts. These petitions, mostly collective ones, were drawn up on behalf of residents of the residential districts where the closed church was located. 34 In case of refusal, a second petition was sent to the authorities after a while. 35 But most importantly, these letters were realistic, sincere and requests were made without much pathos. The petitions of the faithful about the churches of the central district of the city had a certain "set" of similar features and were individual, and therefore a resolution of Metropolitan Eleutherius of Leningrad appeared on one of them.: "churches are not opened at the request of one person who wishes"36.

The believers of the Vyborg side were more active than others in opening churches: they did not limit themselves to letters, but participated in the creation of special commissions, collected information about what is located in the church and how it is maintained, organized a visit to the Sampson Cathedral of the commissioner, so that he would make his verdict on the site on the suitability of the church for worship, 37 but, despite their activity and the fact that there was not a single church in the Vyborg district, Sampsonievsky Cathedral was not transferred to the church until the early 1990s.

During the 1940s, the number of petitions submitted for the opening of churches varied. In 1943-1944, isolated cases of appeals to the authorities were recorded, and in 1945-1947, a period when there were many more petitions, which was associated with the end of the war and spiritual uplift, the adoption of a new "Regulation on the Management of the Russian Orthodox Church", as well as with the opening of a number of churches in Leningrad and the region. In 1953-1955, there were practically no letters from believers, and probably one of the main reasons was that during this period churches in Leningrad were not opened and believers understood that their requests would go unanswered. In 1956-1959, there was a new upsurge in the return movement

34. Petitioners ' details were often included in the letters.

35. This is especially true for petitions about the Sampsonievsky Sobor, which were repeated three times-on April 16, 1948, September 8, 1953, and July 24, 1957. 1948-1959. / / EASPb. f. 1. Op. 11a. D. 13. L. 1.

36. Letter of P. M. Makarov to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia on the opening of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ. 1959 / / Ibid. Op. 11. d. 49. l. 4.

37. Letter from a group of believers to Metropolitan Eleutherius about the opening of the Sampson Cathedral. 1959 / / Ibid. Op. 11a. d. 13. l. 10.

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probably connected not only with the events of the XX Congress of the CPSU and the beginning of the "thaw", but, above all, with the fact that preparations for the opening of the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra began and the very return of the "symbol" of St. Petersburg Orthodoxy to believers was perceived by them as the beginning of a thaw in religious policy, which during the It was overshadowed by new anti-religious attacks. After 1959, after the beginning of a new round of persecution of religion, there were virtually no petitions from the faithful, except for several attempts to get them to return the newly closed chapel of St. Xenia the Blessed, which, however, were not crowned with success.

Petitions to various state and ecclesiastical authorities are a special type of document that is characterized by a certain general structure. It can be divided into several components: an appeal to the addressee, a statement of the request, arguments that should help to satisfy it, information about the addressees, offers or promises.

Among the state authorities to whom the petitions were addressed are the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (later the Council of Ministers), the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, regional, city and district party committees, local executive authorities and individual officials - Chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church G. Karpov, Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee A. Kuznetsov and across Leningrad and the region.

Despite the fact that the faithful "prayed for Stalin", we have no information about what they wrote to him, 38 although it is likely that the archive of J. V. Stalin contains petitions for the opening of churches. It is also unknown whether such letters exist in the personal archive of N. S. Khrushchev, because, despite the fact that he showed himself to be an active atheist, believers, perhaps not very well versed in the political situation, could also turn to him for assistance. This hypothesis is confirmed by a letter addressed to the patriarch, which stated the following:: "We pray for the people, for our government and for Comrade Putin. Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev. We especially approve of Him because he fights for world peace, and most importantly does not deprive us of it.

38. With the exception of the above letter from L. Kruglova about the opening of the Kazan Cathedral. 1949 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 18. L. 5.

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we wish Him good health for this to the Holy Church (!) " 39. This document is of interest for several reasons. First, if you pay attention to the spelling of pronouns related to Khrushchev and the style of writing, you can recall the history of the creation of petitions and the idea of the Russian people about the "good Tsar-Father". Secondly, the Leningrad residents-the authors of the letter, having written that Khrushchev "does not deprive them of the church", "forgot" about the blown-up churches of Dmitry Solunsky and the Savior on Sennaya. Among the representatives of the highest echelons of power, the addressee of two letters preserved in the archives for the specified time period was M. 11. Kalinin. It is noteworthy that he often acted as the addressee of various messages, complaints, and suggestions, which was also noticed by the compilers of the collection "Letters to Power": according to one of the correspondents of 1937, Mikhail Ivanovich was a man who "correctly analyzed the letters, statements of workers, their insults, sometimes applied to them by bureaucrats"40. But in our case, petitions addressed only to M. 11. To Kalinin, there were no petitions "duplicating" similar ones sent to the offices of other organizations. It is important that the addressees of one of the messages, a group of believers from Efimovskaya station, requested that Kalinin "help open the chapel", which was "locked by the chairman of the collective farm" 41. Subsequently, in their letter to the regional executive committee, the believers pointed out that their request had received a "reply from Kalinin with permission to open", and although the letter itself was not shown to them, the believers learned about it "from the words of employees of the District Executive Committee of Workers 'Deputies" (we emphasize after them that the answer to their request from M. 11. Kalinina arrived in less than a month)42. Furthermore, the mere mention of Kalinin's name among the addressees confirms that he was a person who was appealed to in difficult situations not only in the pre-war period, as the authors of the above-mentioned collection emphasize, but also remained so in the future. 43
39. Letter from A. F. Timofeeva and M. N. Petrova to the Patriarch on the opening of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ and the Chapel of Xenia the Blessed, 1964. Op. 11. d. 50. l. 7.

40. Letters to the authorities. 1928-1939 Applications, complaints, denunciations, letters to state structures and Soviet leaders, Moscow, 2002, p. 9.

41. The statement of believers to M. N. Kalinin about the opening of the church at the Efimovskaya station. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 36.

42. Ibid., l. 35.

43. Letter from the believers of Krasnoe Selo, Moscow. 11. Kalinin on the return of temples, 1945 / / Ibid., l. 41.

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Often the recipients of petitions were representatives of church structures, many petitions were addressed personally to bishops. Here we should point out an important fact: according to our calculations, 17 letters were sent to the church authorities in 1944-1945, and 33 to the state authorities, that is, twice as many. This difference can be assessed from several points of view: as trust in the authorities or as a "petition tradition" of the Russian people. In turn, these data can confirm the idea of the historian V. N. Yakunin, author of the article "Strengthening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church and the structure of its governance in 1941-1945."44 that Soviet people, for the most part, considered the "modernization" of the Russian Orthodox Church to be a temporary phenomenon, an indulgence of the authorities, and in this regard, the structure and structure of the Russian Orthodox Church the position of the Church in the Soviet state was not considered permanent.

Petitions to representatives of church structures have specific features. Letters sent to the Metropolitan and Patriarch differ from petitions addressed to the authorities by being less formal, more emotional, sincere, including narratives about their lives in the text of the message, and are descriptive in nature. An example is the letter of the spouses M. N. and P. D. Bochkov, who asked to open the Sampsonievsky Cathedral in 1953: "I live in the Stalinist district of the mountains. Leningrad, where there is not a single open church of the Lord...Your Holiness by Christ the God I 69 l. and my wife 65 l. we ask you to intercede to allow you to transfer this matter, otherwise every day the walls of the temple are being destroyed, and when you have achieved what you want, you will first saturate us sinners with spiritual food and preserve it not only as a temple of the Lord, but also as a monument. I will still remind you that the Sampsonia temple was founded by Peter the Great as a sign of victory over the Swedes that today memorial plaques with the appeal of Peter the Great are completely lying around the temple appeal to soldiers not sparing their lives for the motherland, I also remind you that these two boards are rusted, we are waiting for a letter from you about this Bochkovy"45.

In the epistles to the bishops, the following phrases were encountered:: "We ask you, Vladyka, to open to us our native church of the Smolensk Godhead-

44 Yakunin V. N. Strengthening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church and the structure of its governance in 1941-1945.//Domestic history. 2003. N 4. pp. 83-93.

45. Letter of the Bochkovs to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Sampsonievsky Cathedral. 1953 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 13. L. 7.

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mothers... We ask your efforts and prayers, Vladyka "46," Help us, Vladyka, and heal our heart wound with your help "47," The church prays for the Authorities and for all those in Power. 48. " Turning to you, Your Eminence, we deeply hope that you will understand our sincere request to you and help us obtain permission to open the Church of St. Sampson, for which the faithful will be eternally grateful...49. Quotations from various petitions indicate that the faithful considered the metropolitan to be an intercessor, a close friend, "their" person, and when they addressed him, they did not always remember that he was an official.

In addition, believers often referred to the Bible and the Christian faith in their letters to the Metropolitan and Patriarch, which is not observed in their letters to state authorities. Sometimes these links are of an intensely emotional nature: "Open the temple...in order, with God's help, to quickly drive out the enemy, the villain, this German demon, who does not spare even small children, about whom the Savior Himself said: "let the children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven" 50, sometimes serve as justification for the believers themselves: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, to all of us sinners. Vladyka, forgive and bless us sinful sheep for our sins and for our backwardness from the Holy Church of Christ. We are sinners: we have temporarily fallen into a deep sleep, and when we awaken, we hear your bright words about St. John the Baptist. The Church of Christ, who encourage us from sleep " 51. Sometimes they were a reinforcement of the words about the need to open the temple: "For the information of Your Eminence, holy prayers of God were continuously performed in the Cathedral up to and including 1938, according to the charter-

46. The statement of the parishioners of the Smolensk Church to the metropolitan about the opening of the church. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 12.

47. Letter from parishioners about the opening of the Znamenskaya Church in Pushkin. 1944/ / Ibid., l. 8.

48. Letter from residents of Krasnoe Selo to the Metropolitan about the opening of the church. 1945/ / Ibid., l. 38.

49. Letter from residents of the Stalinsky district to Metropolitan Eleutherius about the opening of the Sampsonievsky Cathedral. 1959 / / EASPB. F. 1. Op. 11a. D. 13. L. 10.

50. Letter from parishioners about the opening of the Znamenskaya Church in Pushkin. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 8.

51. Letter from parishioners of the co-religionist Nemyatovskaya Church to the Metropolitan. 1944/ / Ibid., l. 29.

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52. The largest number of references to the Gospel can be found in L. Kruglova's petitions for the opening of the Kazan Cathedral: "I call on those who have radiant love for their God in their hearts and who have Faith in their hearts even as large as a mustard seed. For Christ said have faith as a mustard seed, and you will move a mountain, and if we put our faith together, we will be able to achieve what I want and what I want to call you to do."53
Believers, who almost always knew where the office of the Metropolitan of Leningrad was located, did not know how to send a message to the Patriarch or the chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, and often wrote the recipient's address as follows:: "Moscow. To Patriarch Alexy" or " The Kremlin. Tov. Karpov"54, not knowing that the latter's office was never located in the Kremlin. So in one of the letters the believers wrote the following: "Tov. Karpov, we ask you, as a great and powerful person who is established in the Orthodox Churches, to pay attention to us sinners...", thus, raising the chairman of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church to the rank of" anointed of God", the petitioners to a certain extent broadcast traditional petitions in the mid-1940s. In general, Leningrad residents sent petitions to the highest authorities to local representatives-the metropolitan and the commissioner, respectively, and sometimes they simply asked them to transmit the request for the opening of the church "with an opportunity", in their own official letter. It should also be noted that the faithful sometimes did not know not only the exact address of the recipient, but also the exact name of the addressee, and this problem mainly affected Metropolitan Eleupherius of Leningrad, whose name was often misspelled 55.

The petitioners themselves almost always left a return address, and this was done not only because the "letter to the authorities" was an official document and required compliance with the rules, but mainly to notify about the decision, to "respond as soon as possible", and almost always, even if standing under the letter-

52. Underlined by me. Letter from residents of Krasnoe Selo to the Metropolitan about the opening of the church//Ibid., l. 38.

53. L. Kruglova's letter to the Patriarch about the opening of the Kazan Cathedral. 1949 / / EASPb. f. 1. Op. 11a. D. 18. L. 3.

54. Letter from parishioners of the co-religionist Nemyatovskaya Church to the Metropolitan. 1944 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 28.

55. Letter of Leningrad residents to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Resurrection Church on blood/ / EASPb. F. 1. Op. 11. D. 49. L. 6.; Letter of Leningrad residents to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Sampsonievsky Cathedral//In the same place. Op. 11a. d. 13. l. 10.

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There were a lot of signatures, only one representative of the group was given the address, and only once two "authorized"ones were singled out. 56 Anonymous letters are almost not found in the archives, and most likely this is due to the friendly tone of the petitions, the lack of expressions of discontent and threats. Only one letter to the metropolitan's office was signed "from those who believe in the Lord, "57 and indeed this" Statement", written in a demanding tone, reproached the metropolitan for not addressing the urgent problems of believers: "Did you know that the Okhta cemetery brings the dead and all persons in winter? do their escorts freeze for several hours in the cold? Did you know that huge masses of people who want to receive communion take communion on the street because they don't have a place in the church? Cemetery churches are one of the most profitable, can't you really expand the premises? 20% are in the temple, and 80% are on the street, people do not spare money and they should be given the opportunity to be before the Lord in the temple. In general, Vladyka, we need some measures on your part to eliminate these glaring shortcomings." This document, despite its demanding and disrespectful tone, had a "traditional" ending: "We ask for your help and blessing." On this request to open a church on Okhta, Metropolitan Gregory instructed the dean to find out the situation. The letter, along with others, was the reason for the beginning of the process of opening the Church of Mary Magdalene on Malaya Okhta: a special inspection of this structure was carried out for its suitability for worship, 58 but because it was impossible to use it, the dean suggested using one of the cemetery crypts as a mortuary so that the church could be left only for worship.59 Despite the fact that the metropolitan controlled the process and left a resolution on the dean's report: "I fully welcome this suggestion. Inform the commissioner with a request for assistance. May the Lord bless your endeavors with success " 60, the church

56. Ibid., l. 9.

57. Statement of residents of Leningrad to the Metropolitan about the opening of the church on Okhta//Ibid., d. 16. l. 6.

58. Statement of residents of Leningrad to the Metropolitan about the opening of the church on Okhta//Ibid., d. 16. l. 3.

59. Ibid., l. 5.

60. Ibid., l. 1.

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it was never returned to the diocese: soon a cinema was opened in the building, and in the mid-1960s 61 were demolished. The case of the anonymous letter, which was a signal for "launching" the mechanism for making a decision on opening a particular church, is significant, as it confirms that since all other petitions were written in a calm, neutral tone, an extraordinary "statement" called on representatives of the church administration to resolve an issue that required urgent action.

In general, almost all letters are sufficiently official and contain typical appeals (with the exception of the above-mentioned case, when the request for the opening of the Kazan Cathedral was started with the words of prayer). This is probably due to the fact that petitions written in a wrong form were not accepted for consideration by the authorized representative and the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (the Council's authorized representatives had to send such petitions back to the addressees for making changes), and, in addition, believers observed the rules for specifying addressees and information about themselves, worrying about so that their petition gets to its destination and doesn't get lost in the "corridors of power".

The second, main part of the petitions was a statement of the request for the opening of the temple. Often, it was precisely from the way the request was presented that the letter received the appropriate name: petition (petition), statement, memo. Petitions and applications were most common, although it should be noted that if, in fact, the letter was a petition, the petitioners did not prelude to it in any way. Almost all letters sent to State authorities had a title and were called "application". Believers themselves did not always see the difference between a petition and a statement and, not always understanding the essence of an official document, could write in the "Statement" addressed to Metropolitan Alexy: "Take care of us who are grieving, we humbly ask and fall at your feet."62 The name "memo" was recorded only in one case, described above, when the applicant actually "presented" the project of reviving the Alexander Nevsky Lavra of her neighbor in the house. Thus, analyzing the names of letters, it can be concluded that believers who may not have previously dealt with clerical documents before-

Antonov V. V., Kobak A.V. 61. Svyatyny Peterburg [The Holy Places of St. Petersburg], Vol. 1, P. 191.

62. Letter of the inhabitants of Pushkin to the metropolitan about the opening of the Znamenskaya Church/ / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. d. 24. L. 8.

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They were not always able to accurately describe their letter, and when naming it, they did not think about whether the essence corresponds to the title and the form of presentation corresponds to the official document.

The presentation of the request for the opening of the temple was often accompanied in the letters by emotional narratives of the petitioners about their lives, which were supposed to play an important role in achieving a positive result when solving a specific issue.

The main narrative elements that alternated in the letters explaining the essence of the problem were as follows:: an indication of the applicants ' advanced age ("we are elderly people and we want to die in the Christian faith" 63) and their work history.

The main stream of petitions is letters from 1944-1946, so they constantly contain indications that the parishioners of the closed church suffered a lot of grief during the war and occupation. Petitioners often wrote that they needed a church to pray "for the dead children who died in the war for the honor and freedom of their homeland." 64 Residents of Pushkin, hoping for the opening of the church, wrote in a letter to the metropolitan that they "stayed in captivity for three years with the enemy, and many did not want it now children die unbaptized, and adults-without guidance and burial " 65. Believers often recalled in their letters to v vlast that they constantly prayed and "prayers for all of us were fervent for the speedy victory of our Red Army and freedom from the villainous Nazis who attacked us." 66
Almost everywhere, requests for the opening of a church were accompanied by arguments that would help bring the issue to a positive conclusion, and served as an explanation for why the authorities should agree to transfer the temple to the faithful. These motives were often connected with the events that were taking place. When asked to open a church in wartime, it was almost always pointed out that the church needed to be opened in order to pray to achieve peace-

63. Letter from residents of the village of Somino to the commissioner of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church about the opening of the church. 1946 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 34.

64. Letter from residents of Krasny Selo to the Commissioner about the opening of the church//Ibid., l. 38.

65. Letter from residents of Pushkin to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Znamenskaya Church//Ibid., l. 7.

66. Letter from residents of Krasny Selo to the Commissioner about the opening of the church//Ibid., l. 39.

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or in gratitude for it, "for our native country, for our fighters in the Red Army, and quite understandably for our Soviet power of the working people." 67 In the first post-war years, they asked to return the church to pray for the dead: "Eternal memory to the fallen heroes. Let us who live find peace of mind and peace of mind."68
In addition to returning the church for prayers to "the Most High God, who will preserve our dear fighters on the distant military front, who finish off the cunning, brutal Germans and give us victory and peace and freedom to the whole world under his legitimate Soviet rule" 69, believers pointed out that they have small children who need to be baptized 70, and trips to churches with them "face great difficulties" 71.

The historical value of religious buildings was also one of the arguments in the letters of believers. Often in the letters there was an indication of the" antiquity " of the temple, and almost always without mentioning the century of construction - the temple in Krasnoe Selo, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sampsonievsky Cathedral, as well as the Znamenskaya Church in Pushkin, about which believers wrote that their church was "ancient, having an icon of the Sign almost from the time of Peter the Great"72. The last quote is an illustration of the fact that the petitioners, judging by the vagueness of this characteristic, either did not know the history of the requested church and the origin of the icon, or did not consider it necessary to tell more specifically about it, although in our opinion, accurate information about this architectural monument and icon of the XVIII century (which was already absent at that time), In the eyes of the authorities, it would be an additional reason for the revival of this temple.

Believers often gave information in their petitions about the good preservation of the exterior decoration and interiors, realizing that since the restoration would require huge funds, which neither the diocese nor they had, they should ask to open only those churches whose investments in repairs (there was no mention of restoration anywhere) would be minimal. So I'll mention it in my email-

67. Ibid.

68. Letter from residents of Pushkin to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Znamenskaya Church//Ibid., l. 8.

69. Letter from residents of Krasny Selo to the Commissioner about the opening of the church//IBID., L. 38.

70. Statement of P. Tsvetkov to the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR//Ibid., l. 33.

71. P. Tsvetkov's application to the Vsevolozhsk district Executive Committee//Ibid., l. 31.

72. Letter from residents of Pushkin to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Znamenskaya Church//Ibid., l. 8.

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At that church in Pushkin, the faithful pointed out that the outside of the temple was preserved and the iconostasis was also intact inside, but "there are no wonderful icons in it, and these places give the impression of blind eyes... it's sad to look at all this... " 73.

As conditions for the opening of the church, they pointed out the preserved objects for divine services (icons, a throne), as well as the presence of art objects in the church - stucco, wall paintings, ceiling lamps, mosaics. The latter, first of all, refers to attempts to revive the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, which was recognized as a" museum "of mosaic and stone-cutting art not only by art historians, who compiled historical references on this monument and pointed out that" the high artistic value of many mosaics is indisputable, which not only justifies, but also makes it necessary to accept the building of the former church state protection"74, but also former parishioners of the Savior on Spilled Blood.

Another argument that believers often made, but not immediately after the war, but as international tensions eased , was the mention that foreign visitors to Leningrad would be able to appreciate what was done for" Soviet believers "and would talk about the" glorious Soviet Government " abroad. In the case of the alleged refusal, it was followed by a message that not only the believers themselves "it is painful to look at such a mess, but also our guests who come from abroad and visit the churches of God, what can they report abroad about such a mess, and even more so in Leningrad" 75. Since such passages appear only in petitions of the 1950s, it can be said that the change in the Cold War periods and the "lifting of the iron curtain", which led to the fact that foreign guests and delegations, including religious ones, began to come to Leningrad often, influenced the mood of believers, which found it difficult to understand. it is reflected in their letters "to the authorities".

Another characteristic feature of petitions from believers living in Leningrad was the mention of the names of well-known people associated with the requested church, including the following:-

73. Ibid.

Petrov A. N. 74. Church of the Resurrection of Christ. Historical background//GIOP archive. 457- 2/1 - 1. P. 17.

75. Letter of Leningrad residents to the Metropolitan about the opening of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ/ / EASPb. f. 1. Op. 11. D. 80. L. 2.

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They remembered Peter the Great, who founded the Sampson and St. Andrew Cathedrals, and the" architect of Lviv " - N. A. Lviv (1751-1803), who created the project of the Trinity Church ("Kulich and Easter"). In her petition for the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, A. M. Frolova recalled that there were "graves of our great commanders A. Suvorov and Al. Nevsky", despite the fact that the relics of St. Alexander Nevsky had long been in the Museum of Atheism in the Kazan Cathedral.

Quite rarely, but it was noted that the requested temple should be opened as soon as possible, due to the fact that a temple was recently opened in the same or in a neighboring area.

It is important to mention that there were cases when the letters of believers to the representative of the authorities did not contain requests for help in opening the church, and in them the parishioners asked for advice from the responsible person: what they themselves can do to resolve the issue at the local level.

Frequent arguments for the opening of the temple were" promises " or specific proposals of believers, which in the texts of petitions either appeared as a separate part, or turned out to be "interwoven" into the presentation of the request. Almost always, believers of the first post-war years offered to restore the church on their own, while not always really estimating the cost of work. For example, in 1946, residents of Ligovka petitioned for the opening of the Tikhvin Church, promising to restore the temple on their own. Their request was not granted not only because of the fact that part of this dilapidated building had workshops of a machine-building technical school, but mainly for the reason that the restoration of the building required an amount of 3-4 million rubles. The calculations were carried out by the dean of the Leningrad city district, N. Lomakin, who wrote in his report to the metropolitan that "on the basis of the above, I would consider the request not subject to satisfaction; I know the material possibilities of the petitioners - I do not think that they were great - and as for assistance from the Diocese, from the funds of the Metropolis, It is up to Your Excellency to judge the dimensions and measures here. " 76
76. Report of the dean to the Metropolitan on the opening of the Tikhvin Church on the territory of the former St. John the Baptist (Holy Cross) Church/ / EASPb. f. 1. Op. 11. d. 46. L. 5.

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In the following years, parishioners sometimes offered to compensate for half the cost of repairs, or to help with "money and effort." The minimum material obligations that the petitioners assumed were promises to maintain order in the open church. However, despite the fact that the faithful were active and not only asked to open the church, but also expressed a desire to help financially in its restoration, as we know, only three churches and a chapel were opened in Leningrad during the period under study. Petitions of believers and resolutions do not allow us to find out the reasons for refusing to open a church. Information about this can be obtained from the reports of the deans and the reports of the commissioners at the general meeting in Leningrad in 1946.

The deans and commissioners themselves cited the following as the main reasons for rejecting the faithful: neither the faithful nor the diocese had the funds to restore the building; there was a functioning church a few kilometers away from the petitioners ' place of residence (this was applicable to almost all petitions for churches in Leningrad). The third most frequent reason for refusal was the inability to vacate the church premises due to its belonging to a cultural institution or military department, as well as because the building is rented as a warehouse or workshops by a stable organization and converted by it at its own expense (for example, Sampsonievsky and St. Andrew's Cathedrals, Trinity Church on Ligovka, etc.) Less often than others, it was mentioned that this church is the center, the "point of attraction" of forces hostile to the Soviet government, and as a "model" here it is necessary to indicate, first of all, the Church of the Resurrection of Christ - the Savior on Spilled Blood and the chapel of Xenia the Blessed. It is noteworthy that for the faithful these two monuments were the most expensive: both during and after the war, believers constantly came to their closed doors for prayer, candles were placed at the crucifixion on the west side of the Savior on Spilled Blood, prostrations were placed, and notes were left at the chapel asking for the heavenly intercession of Xenia of St. Petersburg, which caused a negative attitude the authorities 'attitude to the" non-Soviet behavior "of Soviet citizens and" unauthorized gatherings " 77. Despite the description of these" St. Petersburg shrines " given by the local authorities, the faithful constantly petitioned for their opening (including the opening of these structures).-

Yudin N. I. 77. Pravda o peterburgskikh svyatynyakh [The Truth about St. Petersburg shrines], p. 52.

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in the first chronological letter - in 1943), and as a result, in 1947, the chapel of Xenia the Blessed was transferred to the faithful, but, however, only for 13 years - in 1960 it was closed again in connection with the transfer to a sculpture workshop.

There were also cases when groups of believers were told that their application was not considered "because the application was not written in accordance with the regulations for council commissioners and therefore they were refused on the basis of paragraph 5 of this instruction"78, but in this case the commissioner often explained how the application should be reissued.

Despite the fact that these and other reasons for rejecting believers were indicated in various sources, the most important argument was given at the general meeting of representatives of the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Pskov Region commissioner Ignatov, who said that "the fact of opening a particular church gives grounds for initiating a petition to open a new church, and if we take statistics by then we will see that there are no applications from those areas where there are no churches, and where we have opened churches, there are also applications from there. " 79 All the representatives present at the meeting agreed with this opinion, and therefore it can be concluded that the main reason for the authorities ' refusal to open the church was that the services in each new church caused an influx of a large number of believers and an increase in their number, and this was incompatible with the idea of an atheist state. Perhaps all the other arguments were just reasons to mask the true purpose.

In general, in the course of the study, it was found that letters to state authorities and management structures of the Russian Orthodox Church relate mainly to 1944-1945. These petitions of the faithful turned out to be the most informative, convincing, persistent, and, as a result, effective: they served as the basis for the opening of three churches in Leningrad: the Chapel of St. Xenia at the Smolensk Cemetery, the Trinity Church (Kulich and Easter) and the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

There were more petitions for opening churches in this period than in the rest of the study period: this was due to the revival of the Patriarchate in the 1940s and the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Orthodox Church.-

78. Stenogram of the meeting of authorized representatives of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1946 / / TSGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 75.

79. Ibid., l. 121.

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As a result, believers were more than ever hoping for a positive response from the authorities to their request, and in the mid-1950s, the beginning of the "thaw"was the impetus for petitioning. Over time, when there was an epiphany and an understanding that the requested temple would not be opened, the flow of letters from believers" in power " began to weaken. After the change in the official course towards religion in 1961, almost no petitions were received, and only in 1966 did the faithful again timidly ask for permission from the authorities to open at least the most revered church.

In the first decade after the war, the petitions themselves were very different, individual in structure and style of presentation, as believers did not always know how to make an official petition of this kind and, in this regard, the letters turned out to be very "personal". Over time, their letters became more unified: petitions were clothed in a certain strict form, outside of which, according to the instructions of the authorized representatives of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, they were not subject to consideration.

Another reason why the "letters to the authorities" about the return of churches to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church had a result was the special political situation in the country-the euphoria of victory and the "thaw", and as a result - the desire of government representatives to" listen and hear " the requests of the people, and the ability of believers to express their wishes.

It is important that in 1944-1945, the Central State Administration of St. Petersburg and the EASPb preserved all the petitions submitted for the opening of churches in Leningrad, and this allowed us to make a fairly objective analysis of the situation. In addition, for the specified period, the archive has preserved not only the documents of the authorized Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Leningrad and the region, but also there are transcripts of the reports of the authorized bodies. Thanks to these documents, it became possible to assess the situation in the Leningrad diocese, and with the help of reports from authorized representatives, to find out the reasons why, with such social activity of believers aimed at reviving churches, the results were minimal. Despite the fact that many letters were not effective, and often the temples that believers asked for were not opened, these petitions are very important for studying the era: they are

80. Stenogram of the meeting of the authorized representatives of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church on July 20-22, 1946 / / TsGA SPb. F. 9324. Op. 2. D. 1. L. 75-124.

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- documentary evidence that shows the active activity of believers who tried in various ways to make the authorities listen to their requests.

Bibliography

Archive materials

State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).

F. R-6991 (Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Council of Ministers of the USSR).

F. A-259 (Council of Ministers of the RSFSR).

F. R-5446 (Original resolutions of the Council of People's Commissars and the Council of Ministers of the USSR).

Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI).

F. 17 (Central Committee OF THE CPSU).

Central State Archive of Saint Petersburg (TsGA SPb).

F. 9324 (Office of the Authorized Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in Leningrad and the region).

F. 9620 (Office of the Authorized Council for Religious Affairs).

F. 7384 (Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council of Workers ' Deputies (Leningrad City Executive Committee)).

F-7179 (Executive Committee of the Leningrad Regional Committee of Workers ' Deputies (Leningrad Oblast Executive Committee)).

Diocesan Archive of St. Petersburg (EASPb).

F. 1 (History of churches in Leningrad).

F. 2 (Visual materials).

F. 3 (Office of the Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod).

F. 105 (Orders of the Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod).

Archive of the State Inspectorate for the Protection of Monuments of St. Petersburg.

Petrov A. N. Church of the Resurrection of Christ. Historical background. 457- 2/1 - 1.

Sampsonievsky Cathedral. 28 / Pr-4-1958

Literature

Antonov V. V., Kobak A.V. Svyatyny Peterburg [The Holy Places of St. Petersburg]. Vol. 3. SPb., 1996.

Letters to the authorities. 1928-1939-Statements, complaints, denunciations, letters to state structures and Soviet leaders. Moscow, 2002.

Skobeleva E. A. Rodina moi detstva [The Motherland of my childhood]. 1940-1945-St. Petersburg, 2004.

Shkarovsky M. V. Russkaya Pravoslavnaya tserkva pri Staline i Khrushchev [Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev]. Moscow, 1999.

Yudin N. I. Pravda o peterburgskikh svyatynyakh [The Truth about St. Petersburg Shrines].

Yakunin V. N. Strengthening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church and the structure of its governance in 1941-1945.//Domestic history. 2003. N 4. pp. 83-93.

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