Annotation of the results obtained in 2021
In 2021, the research team carried out its work in the following areas. The search in the archives was continued to identify previously unknown documents on the history of relations between the Vatican and the Catholic world in general and the USSR in foreign archival repositories. This work took on special significance in the light of the fact that in 2020 the Vatican archives opened its collections of 1939 to 1948 for researchers. Project participants E.S. Tokareva, A.L. Beglov, E.S. Zhdanova, and E.O. Shebalina who, despite pandemic restrictions, were among the first Russian researchers who gained access to these collections in June and September of this year, were among those who were working in the newly-discovered collections. The project participants also worked in the archives of the Jesuit and Assumptionist Orders in Rome, the archives of the Congregation of Eastern Churches, the archives of Georgetown University (USA), the Swiss archives as well as domestic ones. Another area of the research team's work was the systematisation of previously obtained materials, their analysis in terms of their value as historical sources, and their translation and commentary. The over-all task was to prepare the materials identified as sources for the history of the USSR in the 1920s and 1950s for publication; a manuscript for this publication was drafted. At present, the manuscript consisting of correspondence sent to the Vatican by members of the Pontifical Assistance Mission to the Starving Population in Russia in 1922-1924 is finalised. The volume, which includes a foreword, original documents and their translations into Russian (from English, Italian, Latin, German, French) with commentaries, amounts to about 4 000 000 characters. The majority of the documents will be published for the first time. As part of the project work, a website was created where the original source materials, both in their original language and in translation, will be made available for scholarly use in order to disseminate the project's results as widely as possible. Work is underway to fill the site with these materials. The website is accessible via the following link: http://centreforchurchistory.ru/projects/entangled-histories/ On 20 October 2021, members of the research group organised an international academic online conference " The Policies of the Holy See Policies During the Second World War": https://igh.ru/events/mezhdunarodnyi-kollokvium-politika-svyatogo-prestola-v-gody-vtoroi-mirovoi-voiny?locale=ru https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGQxSqFM8kpxi9A5SpdUpmj2fI-Gd7qp2 . The conference was held jointly with the Russian Historical Society and the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. In the course of its deliberations, reports were presented based on the study of documents from the funds relating to the pontificate of Pius XII in the Vatican Archives, opened to researchers in March 2020. The conference was attended by researchers from Russia, Italy, and Slovakia. In April 2021, a public launch of Maria Chiara Dommarco's book «Un compito eccezionale e rischioso. Il governo bolscevico e la missione della Santa Sede al tempo della carestia degli anni Venti» («An Exceptional and Risky Task. The Bolshevik Government and the Mission of the Holy See at the Time of the 1920s Famine») written as part of the project took place. It was attended by both national and international researchers. The launch took the form of an online presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qvo-0W5n6jw. A report on the event was released by the news agency Blagovest Info: http://www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=4&id=94397. A Russian translation of the book is due for publication in 2022. E.S. Tokareva continued her work with letters from Russia and diaries of Catholic priests found in the Archives of the 2nd Section of the Vatican State Secretariat, the Georgetown University Archives, the Society of Jesus Archive, the Salesian Order Archives, and the Verbist Order Archives. In addition, research was undertaken in the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation, where a significant layer of documents relating to the work of the Pontifical Famine Relief Mission in Russia was discovered in the process. This work resulted in the publication of the article Adventures of a Jesuit in Russia: How the Soviet authorities fought Fr. Edmund Walsh (1922-1923)// Istoriya, 2021, 12(8). URL: https://history.jes.su/s207987840016690-8-1/ (дата обращения: 28.09.2021). DOI: 10.18254/S207987840016690-8; https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85117038202&origin=resultslist In June 2021, E. Tokareva undertook a research trip to the Vatican archives that allowed her to study a huge collection of documents on Vatican-Soviet relations in the period of 1939-1948, which was made available to scholars in March 2020. Preliminary results of the study of this collection were reported by Tokareva at two conferences: A paper entitled "Catholic Military Chaplains on Russian Territory (1941-1943)" was presented at the bilateral conference " The Policies of the Holy See During the Second World War " (20 October 2021, on-line, at the RHS). https://igh.ru/system/events/programs/000/000/394/original/b773cb71b319d7d91a18de2cd151e4e1ede2eb4b.pdf?1635000720 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIrk1iOfHHs A paper entitled "The Settlement of Catholic Dioceses on the Territories of South-West Ukraine and Moldova during the Years of Occupation (1941-1944)" was presented at the conference "Christian Confessions on the Occupied Territory of the USSR, 1941-1944". (Moscow, Svyato-Philaretovsky Institute, 25-26 November 2021): https://sfi.ru/announcements/node-988aun02v4kt6.html The reports of the military chaplains accompanying the Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian armies occupying part of the territory of the USSR have helped to clarify the position of Catholics in the Soviet Union during that period. Gregory Freeze continued to work on a series of articles on the history of the American Catholic press. He prepared a new article, "The American Catholic Press: From Isolationism to Militant Anti-Communism" (to be published in the Russian Journal of Church History No. 4, 2021). The article is based on a study of the paperwork and reports in the weekly circulars of the Catholic News Agency (Catholic News Agency, archived at Georgetown University). It focuses on the transformation of attitudes among American Catholics from anti-war isolationism to militant anti-communism. At the international academic conference "The Policies of the Holy See in the Second World War" (20 October 2021, on-line, at the RHS), G. Freeze together with the project participants E.S. Tokareva and E. Zhdanova made a presentation "The Main Trends in Historiography in Relation to the Vatican's Position in the Second World War". In connection with this work G. Freeze carried out a systematic analysis of a vast Western historiography on the Vatican during World War II. He studied both English and especially German academic literature, while E. S. Tokareva and E. Zhdanova - Italian, French, Serbian, and Soviet/Russian ones. A.L. Beglov continued his analysis of the documents identified in the course of the project, placing particular emphasis on the relationship between representatives of the Catholic Church and Orthodox Christians. In the course of this work, in collaboration with N.A. Belyakova, he co-authored an article entitled "Write Even to the Pope. Letters From Soviet Believers to the Roman Pontiff: Formation and Existence of a Tradition" (to be published in the journal "State, Religion, and Church in Russia and Worldwide", No 42(4), 2021; Scopus, Q1). The authors explore the tradition of appealing to foreign religious leaders, primarily the Pope, on the part of believers in Soviet Russia. This practice emerged during the years of the Civil War and persisted until the end of the Soviet period. The reason for its emergence was the belief that pressure from religious and political leaders in the West could force the Soviet leadership to change its policies of persecuting believers. In 1923, this belief evolved into the Curzon Ultimatum Syndrome, since it was with the appearance of this memorandum by the British Government that believers associated the release of Patriarch Tikhon from custody. A.L. Beglov and I.A. Fadeyev co-authored an article entitled "The Fate of the Catholic Church of St. Louis of the French in Soviet Moscow: The Perspective of an American Assumptionist". (Istoriya, 2021, 12(8) URL: https://history.jes.su/s207987840016675-1-1/; https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85117012048&origin=resultslist). A characteristic feature of the parish of St Louis the French was that its nucleus was made up of foreigners and representatives of the diplomatic corps. In the second half of the 1940s, the Soviet authorities drove the foreigners out of the parish and placed the community of St. Louis Church under their control. One of the foreign chaplains who served there between 1934 and 1945, Fr. Leopold Brown, after Stalin's death, sent a memorandum to the US State Department suggesting that the American government intervene to return control of the church to Catholics of all nationalities. The basis for this intervention, from Fr. L. Braun's point of view, was the 1933 F.D. Roosevelt-M.M. Litvinov agreement, guaranteeing religious freedoms for American citizens in the USSR. A. L. Beglov has prepared an article "The Renovationists and Soviet regime in 1923 as reported by the Exarch for Russian Catholics" (to be published in the Russian Journal of Church History, No 4, 2021). It is based on three documents from the archives of Fr. Walsh in Georgetown University (USA), identified in the course of the implementation this project, namely a fragment of a letter from Walsh to the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Gasparri and two attachments to it – a lengthy letter from the Russian Catholic Exarch, Fr. Leonid Fyodorov and an appeal to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee from Metropolitan Antonin (Granovsky) of the Renovated Church, forwarded by him to Walsh, in connection with the tax policy of the Soviet authorities towards the clergy and the faithful. At the international academic conference "The Policies of the Holy See in the Second World War" (20 October 2021, on-line, at the RHS), A.L. Beglov and I.A. Fadeyev made a joint presentation "The Turning Point in Soviet Religious Policy in the 1940s". (https://youtu.be/TnTFO6j1buk?list=PLGQxSqFM8kpxi9A5SpdUpmj2fI-Gd7qp2). They examined documents from a newly disclosed archive collection of the Vatican Secretariat of State that had been identified during a research trip to the Vatican in June 2021. The speakers focused in particular on a lengthy note by Fr Leopold Braun, priest of the Catholic Church of St. Louis of the French in Moscow, dated 6 December 1943. In June 2021, A. L. Beglov undertook a research trip to the Vatican to work with the newly disclosed archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Eastern Churches. The collections of the Secretariat of State yielded several groups of documents describing the Catholic Church’s reaction to the course of World War II and to changes in both German and Soviet religious policy during that period. In 2021, N.A. Belyakova carried out research in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. A range of materials characterising the position of Catholics in the post-war USSR was identified. Among the most valuable of the findings was a report on the intensification of the activity of the clergymen returning from places of detention, compiled by the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults in 1958 and representing a cross-section of the Catholic clergy who came to the attention of the Soviet authorities. It is currently being prepared for publication. In the course of research in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, a set of documents indicating the possibility of revising the status of the Catholic Church in the USSR in the mid-1950s was discovered which will also be made available for scholarly scrutiny. During her trip to Switzerland in June 2021, N. A. Belyakova found a collection of Orthodox samizdat materials, including the appeals of various groups of believers to the Vatican. In addition, a selection of materials on the position of Catholic faithful who found themselves in the territory of the USSR after the Second World War was made. At the international conference "Reinventing Religion: The Rise of Religious Sensibility in the Late Soviet Union (1960s-1980s)" held in Basel on 10-12 June 2021, N.A. Belyakova delivered a paper titled "Studying the everyday life history of different Christian communities: Personal experience of communication in the post-Soviet space" comparing forms of religious activism practiced among believers of different denominations in the Soviet Union republics. Furthermore, in 2021, as part of the project N.A. Belyakova published her study "The U.S.S.R., Greek Catholics and the Vatican 'Ostpolitik' in the 1960s-1970's: Grey Zone and the Stumbling Blocks" in the collective volume "Stolen Churches or Bridges to Orthodoxy? Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Dialogue", Palgrave Macmillan: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55442-2_10. In this study the question was posed as to what role the Greek Catholics, who were placed outside the legal boundaries in the USSR, played, or did not play, in the development of the relations between the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Vatican. Particular emphasis was placed on the issue, unexplored in historiography, of the internal contradictions in Soviet policy towards the Vatican and the differences in approaches that existed between different departments, as well as between the Union and republican leadership. N. A. Belyakova's study "Cardinal F. König's Trip to the Soviet Union in 1980: Church Diplomacy amidst the Cold War" (Russian History. 2021. No. 5) was published in 2021. The article focuses on the unofficial trip of Cardinal Franz König, head of the Catholic Church in Austria, who initiated a ten-day tour to the USSR for a delegation of 30 members of the Pro Oriente Foundation Board in November 1980. The article questions the extent to which the Iron Curtain was impenetrable for representatives of the Catholic world, how the symbolic resource of visits to the Soviet Union was used in Western religious circles during the Cold War, and how Cardinal Franz König's vision of Vienna as a bridge between the churches of the West and the East was, or was not, given a concrete diplomatic, ecclesiological, and tourist dimension. As part of her research trip to Georgia, N.A. Belyakova analysed historiography on the extent to which the history of Catholics in Georgia in the post-war period has been studied; data was collected on archives which contain sources on the history of the Catholics in Georgia. Oral history materials were collected and expert interviews were taken with Tata Kopaleishvili, a historian of the Catholic Church and researcher at the University of Leuven; with Nugzar Bardavelidze, a professor at Tbilisi University; a major interview was done with some descendants of priest Konstantin Saparishvili, who shared materials from their family archives. In 2021, I.A. Fadeyev reviewed the bulk of the Boston Archive of the Assumptionist Order (USA). A preliminary systematisation of these materials was carried out. In the process, materials have been identified that have not been previously published and/or made available for scholarly scrutiny. The volume of materials will require further work for a full and complete study. Some of the identified material formed the basis for the article “The Fate of the Catholic Church of St. Louis of the French in Soviet Moscow: The Perspective of an American Assumptionist”. (Istoriya, 2021, 12(8) URL: https://history.jes.su/s207987840016675-1-1/; https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85117012048&origin=resultslist), which he co-authored with A.L. Beglov and which was published in the journal History (WoS, Scopus - Q1). I.A. Fadeyev and D.D. Shebalin co-authored and published an article in the journal Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Sviato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta, Seria I. Bogoslovie, Filosofia, Religiovedenie" (Scopus, WoS), entitled "Exarch L. Fedorov on the religious policy of Soviet authorities: "The government themselves regulate the dogmata of the church in a way that seems most beneficial..." (2021. Issue. 95. С. 109-122 DOI: 10.15382/sturI202195.109-122; https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85111715998&origin=resultslist) In spring 2021, E. S. Zhdanova worked in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, where she managed to identify previously unpublished documents from the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults fund (GARF, f. P-6991, op.3) reflecting the Soviet view on the problem of the Soviet authorities' establishing control over the St. Louis Catholic parish in Moscow. This work resulted in E. S. Zhdanova preparing and publishing an article in the journal ENOJ (WoS, Scopus, VAK, RSCI). From 7-29 September 2021 Ekaterina Zhdanova was on a research trip to Rome to work in the Vatican Archives: the Apostolic (Secret) Archives of the Vatican and the Archives of the 2nd Section of the Vatican State Secretariat. In the Apostolic Archives the work with the archive of the Relief Commission which was started in spring 2020 with the aim of searching and gathering information about the assistance provided by the Holy See to the USSR citizens in the war and post-war years as well as identifying personal appeals addressed to the Pope by the Soviet citizens has been continued. On the basis of her work in the archives, Е.S. Zhdanova prepared a report "The Vatican's Assistance to Soviet Prisoners of War during and after World War II", presented at the international conference "The Policies of the Holy See in the Second World War". (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuK8r6keGkQ&list=PLGQxSqFM8kpxi9A5SpdUpmj2fI-Gd7qp2&index=4). During the period under review, as part of the project, D.D. Shebalin continued to work on the translation and analysis of documents received from the Archives of Section II of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. He and I.A. Fadeyev co-authored and published an article in the journal Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Sviato-Tikhonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta, Seria I. Bogoslovie, Filosofia, Religiovedenie" (Scopus, WoS), entitled "Exarch L. Fedorov on the religious policy of Soviet authorities: "The government themselves regulate the dogmata of the church in a way that seems most beneficial..." (2021. Issue. 95. С. 109-122 DOI: 10.15382/sturI202195.109-122; https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85111715998&origin=resultslist) D.D. Shebalin, together with A.V. Vishivanyuk, prepared a paper entitled "The Position of Greek Catholics in the Occupied Territories of Southern Russia" based on translated documents, which was presented at the international conference "The Policies of the Holy See During the Second World War" (Moscow-Rome, 20 October 2021), organised as part of the project by the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Papal Committee for Historical Sciences (Vatican) (https://youtu.be/sgHbKLlxFvA?list=PLGQxSqFM8kpxi9A5SpdUpmj2fI-Gd7qp2). D.D. Shebalin, together with E.O. Shebalina, published the monograph "The Holy See's Foreign Policy: Russia and the World", which in addition to the state's priorities in the international arena examines the history and current state of the Russian-Vatican dialogue in the context of international relations and analyses its transformation. The book provides a comprehensive picture of bilateral relations of the states at the present stage and the prospects of their development. At the same time, the contemporary policy of the Vatican is based on the traditions of Vatican diplomacy and takes account of the realities it faced in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In this respect the experience of interaction with the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist bloc was of considerable importance. That is why the monograph draws on the documents obtained and studied in the course of this project’s implementation. On 16 November 2021, D.D. Shebalin took part in the presentation of the book "L'Ostpolitik Vaticana. L'Unione Sovieteica e la Chiesa Ortodossa Russa. 1945-1978" at the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Rome, where a discussion focused on the foreign policy of the Holy See in the post-war years took place. During the discussion, D. Shebalin presented the results of his research carried out within the framework of the project, describing the background to the eastern vector of Vatican policy. E. O. Shebalina continued to collect, describe, and analyse documents from the Archives of the Second Section of the State Secretariat of the Holy See, as well as from the Archives of the Assumptionist Order. E. O. Shebalina has gathered an array of documents, including primarily letters from Catholic priests testifying to the conditions of the Church in the USSR, in particular those of Fr. Braun and Bishop P. Neveu. This material was processed, digitised, and translated by E. O. Shebalina. Furthermore, on the basis of sources that have not been previously drawn upon in Russian and foreign historiography, E. O. Shebalina prepared for publication in the journal "International Analytics" (indexed in the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI) and other Russian and international databases) an article entitled "The Foreign Policy of the Holy See in Contemporary International Relations: Origins, Methods, Tools". In the article, the author has attempted to present a comprehensive picture of the origins, functions, and directions of papal diplomacy, focusing on its transformation in the context of the contemporary political system. A serious role in determining the current status and methods of papal diplomacy was played by the study of Russian-Vatican relations in the twentieth century. Thus, the work plan stipulated by the grant agreement was fulfilled by the project participants. The project targets for publications in peer-reviewed Russian and international journals, including those indexed in the international databases Web of Science and Scopus, were fully met.

 

Publications

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2019
In 2019, the work of the team, working on the project “Entangled Histories: Russia and the Vatican, 1917-1958,” went in two directions. The first one was the study of the latest scholarly literature on the subject of the project. To that end, I. A. Fadeyev, D. D. Shabalin and E. O. Shabalina wrote two articles, respectively. The second direction was identification and analysis of the materials found in archives. G. Friz, N. A. Belyakova, E. S. Tokareva, K. Dommarko, I. A. Fadeev worked in Russian and foreign archives. Using the materials discovered, A. L. Beglov, N. A. Belyakova, E. S. Tokareva, G. Freeze wrote several articles. Two round tables were organized as part of the project. On October 8, 2019, a round table was held at the MGIMO-University. The presentation and discussion of the scholarly project of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Entangled Histories: Russia and the Vatican, 1917-1958” took place and was well-attended by professors and students of MGIMO. In their respective reports G. Freeze, E. S. Tokareva, N. A. Belyakova showed the limitations of the source base on the history of religiosity and everyday life of believers of the Soviet period and described the existing overseas archival collections of documents relevant to the topic. The results of the round table were presented on the MGIMO-University’s website: https://mgimo.ru/about/news/departments/konferentsiya-lentangled-histories-rossiya-i-vatikan-1917-1958/, and also on the website of The Journal of Education and Science “ISTORIYA” (“History”): https://history.jes.su/s207987840007417-7-1/. On October 31, 2019, the round table "Еhe Catholic Church and Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe: The Experience of Writing History" was held. The attention of the organizers and participants of the event was focused on the analysis of discourses and narratives used in writing the history of the Catholic Church of the 20th century. The discussion focused on three major issues. 1) Catholic religiosity under communism: problems and research methods. 2) Did the "Hand of Moscow" exist? What was the role and place of the Soviet authorities in the history of relations between the Vatican and the leadership of Eastern Europe: historiographical clichés and source base? 3) Catholicism and anti-communism in religious environment, and the place of the Vatican’s "Eastern Policy" in this construct. The round table was attended by scholars from Catholic scholarly institutions of the Vatican, project participants, representatives of Russian and foreign secular academic institutions, independent researchers. The event is important for the project because it identified the problem areas of modern historiography, i.e. established historiographical clichés that do not always stand the test of new historical sources. The work of the round table is reflected on the websites of the cultural centre "Pokrovskie Vorota" and the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences: https://pokrovka27.com/afisha_october2019#rec122804546, http://igh.ru/events/katolicheskaya-tserkov-i-kommunisticheskie-rezhimy-v-vostochnoi-evrope-opyt-napisaniya-istorii.html?locale=ru, and also covered on the website of the Blagovest-info News Agency: http://www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=4&id=85327. On June 19-20, 2019, the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences (Vatican) held a joint international scholarly conference "Models and Practices of Holiness in the Church traditions of East and West" (Moscow). The conference touched upon the issues of veneration, canonization, and study of biographies of martyrs of the Christian churches affected during the Soviet period, including Catholic martyrs. During the conference, it was possible to identify the problem fields associated with the study of sources on the daily life of believers subjected to persecution. The problem of searching for and reconstructing the ego-documents of believers – their diaries, records, letters – is a serious source problem, since any personal document could become the basis for accusations and new persecutions. At the same time, the investigating authorities seized and destroyed both religious literature and various “material evidences” that could shed light on the history of everyday life of believers in an atheistic state. For the sake of having a perspective in the project, it was very important to discuss the biographies of those martyrs who became the creators of the preserved historical sources that are the focus of this project. In addition, communication at the conference with representatives of various organizations of the Catholic Church gave grounds for future contacts that could facilitate the search for relevant documents in various archives. The head of the project, G. Freeze published an article entitle “A New Source for Russian Religious History: the American Catholic Press, 1917-1924” (Modern and Contemporary History, 2019, No. 6 (November-December), pp. 65-84), in which he showed that with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, the new regime systematically destroyed religious organizations, which until 1917 were collecting mass documentation about each denomination and about ordinary believers. As a result, historians have at their disposal a corpus of documents generated by the Communist Party, Soviet and punitive bodies, which provide the researcher with a one-sided view of the life of religious organizations and believers in the USSR. Without doubt, it is necessary to expand the source base by attracting documents that are outside of the Soviet Union, primarily in the rich archival collections of the Roman Catholic Church. The article introduces a little-known source into scholarly circulation: the archive of the Catholic News Service (CNA). American Catholics took a keen interest in Soviet Russia, primarily because of the hopeful prospect of missionary activity among the still deeply religious Russian people. The article is based on materials collected and distributed by CNA and offers a new perspective on religious life in the early years of the Soviet regime. At the round table at the MGIMO-University (October 8, 2019), G. Freeze gave a talk "Expanding the database of documents on religious life in Soviet Russia: Catholic archives abroad", which was intended to give an overview of the project “Entangled Histories: Russia and the Vatican, 1917-1958”, supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant No. 19-18-00482). The talk consiste2d of four sections: (1) explanation of the theoretical and methodological basis of the project ("Entangled Histories»); (2) the empirical necessity of the project due to the extreme degradation in the number and quality of sources about religious life due to the anti-religious policy of the Soviet government; (3) transnational context: unlike their “counterparts” in Soviet Russia, Western denominations continued to produce a rich set of sources that allowed Western researchers to rethink traditional concepts, in particular the secularization paradigm; and (4) to overcome the backwardness in the study of religion in Soviet Russia, this project aims to expand the source base. The purpose of the project is to collect and put into scholarly circulation letters, reports, and other sources, which at one time were forwarded through various channels and are in the Vatican and other Catholic archives in the West. In his talk, G. Freeze cited several specific examples discovered during his preliminary research in the American Catholic archives. E. S. Tokareva published an article entitle “Catholics in Russia facing the new authorities: 1917-1921” in “Religiski-filozofiski raksti” (Riga, 2019. XXV. P. 158-173), a peer-reviewed journal indexed in the Scopus database. She concludes that in the first years after the 1917 Revolution, the authorities rarely resorted to repressions against priests, and the known cases are mostly explained by the state of civil war. Protests by clergy and laity against the arrests were successful in many cases. Also, as a result of the analysis of the impact of the revolutionary events in Russia on religious policy in Eastern Europe, she concludes that the radicalization of governments and their religious policies aimed at separating the Church from the State as well as limiting the rights of the Church became a general trend in Europe after the First World War. E. S. Tokareva made presentations at two round tables organized within the framework of this project, and also worked in the State Archive of the Russian Federation on the topic of the project. A. L. Beglov published an article in the Russian peer-reviewed journal “St Tikhon’s University Review. Series II: History; Russian Church History", in which new documents from the Vatican archives are introduced into scholarly circulation. The documents are letters of Orthodox believers to the Pope, written in 1931, with requests for help. A. Beglov considers these documents in the context of Soviet believers’ attempts to communicate with representatives of other states and foreign religious institutions. The latter, it was believed, could put pressure on the Soviet authorities in order to weaken their anti-religious onslaught. Such attempts gained special significance after the “Curzon Ultimatum” of 1923, with which Orthodox believers in the USSR associated the release from arrest of Patriarch Tikhon. Published letters have a number of common features. 1) All of them are a response to the Papal "crusade of prayers" of 1930 initiated in defence of the believers in the USSR. As can be seen from these documents, ordinary believers in Soviet Russia positively perceived this démarche of the Roman Pontiff. 2) All letters reveal some information that, as their authors assumed, could help the Pope to protect the faithful in the USSR. So, the author of one of the letters directly writes about the possible demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and asks the Pope to prevent this. 3) The authors turned to the Pope for help, often quite specific (to protect the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, to prevent the possible expulsion of peasant refugees into the USSR). Thus, the idea of transmitting information about the situation in the Soviet Union abroad, as well as seeking help from foreign religious leaders, was widespread even in the mass consciousness. In addition, A. L. Beglov participated in the organization of round tables held within the framework of this project, also acting both as a moderator and participant. In 2019, N. A. Belyakova conducted a research in the archives of Austria: the Pro Oriente Foundation, established by Cardinal Franz König, and Kathpress, which she managed to identify materials concerning Catholics of the Soviet Union. A report on the results of the research was presented at a regular workshop of the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Historia Ecclesiae et Religionis,” the materials of which were posted on the Institute’s website and the YouTube channel (http://igh.ru/events/voobrazhaya-nastoyaschuu-duhovnost-interpretatsiya-v-avstrii-i-shveitsarii-religioznoi-zhizni-sovetskogo-souza-v-1960-70-e-gg?locale=ru; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4O_PIjMD5k). N. Belyakova placed the history of relations between Soviet Catholics and the Vatican in the broader cultural, political, and diplomatic context of postwar history in the article "Soviet cultural diplomacy, propaganda, and domestication of discourses in the Cold war", published in the journal “Bulletin of Perm University. Series: History” (Scopus). 2019. No 4. In addition to that, Belyakova presented two papers, (1) one entitled "Vatican’s Ostpolitik Moscow, Russian Orthodox Church, and the "Uniats" in the context of the Cold War” at the ASEES Congress in Zagreb on June 15th, 2019, and the other, entitled "Zur theologischen Auseinandersetzung zwischen Russischer Orthodoxer Kirche und katholischer Kirche im Kalten Krieg (1960er – 1970er Jahre): die sowjetische perspektive" at the international Colloquium " «Der Blick auf den Anderen. Katholisch-orthodoxe Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmungen“ on September 27th, 2019 in Belgrade. Belyakova also participated in the round table "the Catholic Church and Communist regimes in Eastern Europe: The Experience of Writing History" (October 31, 2019) as an organiser and a speaker. I. A. Fadeev worked with a unique archival collection of the North American Province of the Assumptionist Order in the United States, containing documents generated by Catholic priests who served in Soviet Russia. Among other documents, he managed to identify those that could be divided into three categories: official correspondence, diaries / memoirs, parish documents relevant to the social history of the Catholic community of Moscow in 1930-1940. As part of his work in the archive, he was engaged in digitizing the discovered materials. I. A. Fadeev also published an article entitled “Russia and the Vatican in the international context during Pius XI’s pontificate (Rev. of the book: RUSSIA and the VATICAN, 1920-1930. Electronic scientific and educational journal "History", vol. 4, 2018)" (Modern and Contemporary History. 2019. No 6. P. 202-205), in which he demonstrates that the history of the Catholic Church in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s is a poorly researched area in Russian historiography. Against the background of a relatively small number of scholarly publications, “"Russia and the Vatican” (The Journal of Education and Science “History”, № 4) is an important contribution to the expansion of the field of research. I. Fadeev took part in the organization of round tables held within the framework of this project and spoke at them as a participant. In 2019, K. Dommarco focused on the problems associated with the interaction between Catholics and Orthodox in the period from 1917 to 1939. She considered a) the specific assistance given by the Vatican to the Russian Orthodox faithful in need in exile; b) the Papal famine relief mission to Russia in 1922-1924. K. Dommarco studied archival documents in the Secret Archive of the Vatican and the Roman archives of the Society of Jesus. She participated in the organization of the conference and a round table mention earlier. She has prepared an article entitled "Modus operandi of the Holy See in dealing with some cases of requests for assistance sent to the Vatican in the 1920s – 1930s: based on new archival documents", which will be published in December 2019 in the Journal of Education and Science “History”, indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus. Also, she prepared the text of a monograph on the history of the Papal mission to help the hungry in Russia in 1922-1924 (the manuscript of the monograph is attached to this report). D. D. Shebalin and E. O. Shebalina conducted a historiographical analysis of interactions between Russia and the Holy See as the centre of the Catholic world, from 1917 to 1941. Together they published an article entitle "Russia and the Vatican in the first half of the 20th century: modern historiography of the issue" in a journal included in the List of leading peer-reviewed scientific journals (Bulletin of Bryansk State University, No 3 (41), 2019. P. 88-96), in which the researchers concluded that (a), despite the attempts made, the process of establishing cooperation between the USSR and the Holy See in the first half of the 20th century failed; (b) there were formed a historiographical lacuna, associated with the lack of documentary sources for this period. There is an also need to study the correspondence materials generated by Catholic priests, who may have assessed the progress and prospects of the Russian-Vatican dialogue in different ways. D. D. Shebalin and E. O. Shebalina took part in the organization of a round table at the MGIMO-University, designed to promote this project among professors and students of that University. D. D. Shebalin presented a paper at the round table. He also worked with inventories of the Vatican's Secret Archives.

 

Publications

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Annotation of the results obtained in 2020
In 2020, the research team carrying out the project worked in the following areas. First, search for documents and archive work were carried out to identify, copy, and translate documents that shed light on the life and activities of representatives of the Catholic Church and believers in the USSR. The outbreak of the pandemic affected the progress of these works, but did not disrupt them. Second, the members of the research team analysed, commented on, and introduced into scientific circulation the documents at their disposal. Third, the team carried out a number of activities within the project that pursued a threefold goal. They discussed 1) presenting the research results to the academic community, drawing its attention to the project, its methodology and results, 2) involving scholars from different countries and regions in the discussion of the project's issues, 3) including various archival collections, that the scholars who participated in the events work with, within the purview of project participants and developing collaboration mechanisms for studying these documentary collections using the project methodology. The international conference "Catholics in the Soviet Union: Testimonies of Ordinary People about the Radical Transformations of the 1920s-1950s" (April 7-8, 2020) was devoted to the analysis of sources of non-state origin about the daily life of Catholics in different republics of the USSR. The conference was attended by 23 researchers representing reputable universities and research institutions in Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, the United States, and other countries. The conference consisted of four thematic panels, each of which corresponded to a specific type of source: epistolary genre, memoirs, materials of oral history, and ethnographic expeditions. A separate panel was devoted to regional features of sources about the daily life of Soviet Catholics. In addition, a number of papers presented reviews of Polish and American archives, which, along with the Vatican Archives, are rich in documentary collections related to the history of the Catholic Church in Russia. The theoretical basis of such research was described in the article by G. Freeze. The presentation of specific cases from the history of Catholics in the USSR gave grounds to talk about a special chronology and geography of Catholic movements in the Soviet Union. Cataclysms, such as wars, deportations, and repressions, dealt a terrible blow to traditional communities, clergy, and national minorities, while simultaneously expanding the geographical distribution of Catholic communities, contributing to the animation of lay activities, especially among women, and sparking the search for new forms of worship. The introduction of a new layer of sources into scientific circulation showed the possibility of going beyond the boundaries of the institutional history of the Church and the prospects for analysing everyday religiosity from the angle of different research directions. The Conference was announced in both Russian and English: https://mgimo.ru/about/news/conferences/katoliki-v-sovetskom-soyuze/; https://igh.ru/news/sostoyalas-mezhdunarodnaya-nauchnaya-konferentsiya-katoliki-v-sovetskom-souze?locale=ru. The unfolding pandemic did not disrupt the planned event. It was held in an online format, which even expanded its audience. The recording of the conference was posted on the research team’s YouTube-channel (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGQxSqFM8kpyfVTrpJFVKQvaETLeMwY77), where, as of December 1, 2020, its thematic blocks have gained a total of more than 400 views. Information about the event was also posted on the MGIMO website: https://mgimo.ru/about/news/departments/konferentsiya-katoliki-v-sovetskom-soyuze-svidetelstva-prostykh-lyudey-o-radikalnykh/. Based on the results of the conference, a thematic issue of the electronic scientific and educational journal “History” (indexed in the Web of Science, Scopus, RSCI, included on the list of the All-Russian Attestation Commission), Russia and the Vatican. Catholics in the Soviet Union: Testimonies of Ordinary People about Radical Transformations of the 1920s-1950s / ed. By E. S. Tokareva, A. L. Beglov, N. A. Belyakova. 2020. Vol. 11. Issue 7 (93): https://history.jes.su/issue.2020.3.7.7-93/. An online presentation of the issue was held in November 2020. The recording of the event is available on the research team’s YouTube-channel, where it has collected 50 views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrnEDz_vihg&pbjreload=101. Information about the presentation was distributed through the channels of the Blagovest.Info News Agency: http://www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=4&id=91963. The round table "Lithuanian Catholics in Siberia: sources, historiography, and research prospects" (November 26, 2020) was held by the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with research centres of Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). The round table was attended by researchers from various regions of Russia, Lithuania, and Poland. The event was focused on discussing issues related to historical research on the life and activities of Catholics from Lithuania who lived in Siberia. These included both voluntary migrants and persons forcibly displaced during the Soviet period. The participants of the round table discussed the degree of knowledge of the issue and the state of the source base, the problem of availability of sources and ways to solve it; the latest research on this topic published in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia; current directions for further research; prospects for cooperation in the field of publishing relevant sources. A recording of the round table is available on the YouTube-channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGQxSqFM8kpxBE1pMUtg9xzb-SAhnhsci. Information about the event was distributed by the Blagovest.Info News Agency: http://www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=91910. In 2020, the work on identifying, copying, translating, and analysing the letters and memoirs of Catholic priests from Russia continued. The work was focused on the papers of missionaries - members of the Papal Mission in Russia during the famine of 1921-1923. Thanks to the work of G. Freeze (at Georgetown University), E. O. Shebalina (in the archive of the 2nd Section of the Vatican State Secretariat), E. S. Zhdanova (in the Apostolic Archive of the Vatican) and Ch. Dommarco (in the archives of the 2nd Section of the Vatican State Secretariat, the archives of the Salesian Order, and the archives of the Jesuit Order) more than 500 documents were copied and translated into Russian. We continue to analyse and comment on them. The study of these papers revealed the most important facts, previously unknown to researchers, that significantly change some previously existing clichés. Based on the materials of the archive of the American Catholic News Agency, G. Freeze wrote an article “American Catholic Press: Religious NEP, Repression and Laicization (1925–1939)” (Modern and Contemporary History. 2020.№6. P. 121-139), in which he showed that despite the economic and political "deglobalization" in the interwar period and the weakening of direct communications between countries, the American Catholic Agency collected and distributed a lot of fairly reliable information about the religious situation in the USSR. This data played an important role in the transition of Vatican diplomacy from negotiations with the Soviet leadership to confrontation, which became the basis of long-term anti-communism among American Catholics. The Agency's information showed the ineffectiveness and even counterproductivity of the Soviet anti-religious policy, which led to the laicization of the Catholic parish and the degradation of everyday religious practices. On December 10, 2020, G. Freeze made a presentation at the permanent seminar of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History, Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, “Historia Ecclesiae et Religionis”, in which he presented a number of documents from the archive of the American Catholic News Agency, which contain reports on the situation in Soviet Russia in the late 1920s-1930s. The report provoked a lively discussion. A recording of the report is available on the YouTube-channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g593xKJlv28&list=PLGQxSqFM8kpzoJwMMjpTI5AkhvjyA8x8S&index=1. In the article «“Entangled History” and the Religious Quotidian in the USSR» (ESEJ "History". 2020.Vol. 11, Issue 7 (93): http://history.jes.su/s207987840010690-8-1/), G. Freeze showed the prospects of looking into research area in order to expand the research field: the transition from institutional history to the study of the history of everyday life and religious practices. E. S. Tokareva, as a result of the study of documents related to the work of the Papal Relief Mission in Russia (1922-1924), in particular the correspondence of its Director General, the American Jesuit Fr. Edmund Walsh with Catholic hierarchs and officials of the RSFSR (Russian History. 2020. No. 4. P. 188-204), concluded that this Mission was initially liable to fail, despite the great assistance it provided (even if it could not be compared, scope-wise, with the help of other organizations – Nansen, ARA, etc.). Walsh was in fact the only Vatican representative in Russia who could give the Vatican a real picture of what was happening thanks to the possibility of direct communication with the Holy See, which he had. This was the reason for the growing hatred of the Soviet authorities and their insistent requests for his recall. Walsh left Russia in early December 1923. A study of the epistolary heritage of the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, conducted by E. S. Tokareva (together with A. V. Vishivanyuk) (ESEJ "History". 2020. Vol. 11. 7(93): https://history.jes.su/s207987840010692-0-1/), allowed to conclude that despite the high interest of the head of the UGCC in the question of the reunification of the Orthodox Churches with the Catholic Church and his initiatives addressing ecclesiastical differences between the Churches, he almost failed to achieve any results. He and his correspondents failed to come to a common vision of the past history, in particular, the Metropolitan disputed the established idea about the loyalty of the Orthodox Church to the legacy of Prince Vladimir the Great, and neither the Greek Catholics nor the Orthodox were ready for fundamental changes affecting the essence of their creeds that contained the provisions dividing them even to this day. In the article by A. L. Beglov, E. S. Tokareva, and I. A. Fadeyev "Liturgical Practices of Catholics in Soviet Russia in the 1920s-1930s: norms and anomalies" (State, Religion, and Church in Russia and Abroad. 2020. No. 4) the problem of changes in the liturgical practices of Roman Catholics in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s is examined. Nine documents from foreign archives are being introduced into scientific circulation, which reflect the process of altering the norms related to the Liturgy and its celebration at the request of representatives of Russian Catholics. These documents address disciplinary issues related to the celebration of the Eucharist, such as the time of celebration of the Mass, the duration and severity of the Eucharistic fast, permission for lay people to bring the Holy Sacrament to the infirm and the imprisoned, Mass stipends. It is noted that the Holy See readily relaxed the canonical requirements. As a result, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the time for celebration of the Mass became variable, increasingly shifting to the evening hours, the rules of Eucharistic fast for both clergy and laity were relaxed, which opened up the possibility of regular communion at evening Masses, laity were given the right to bring the Eucharist to those in need of it, and Mass stipends became an instrument of financial support for the clergy by the Holy See in critical situations. The study shows that the main reason for the change in liturgical practices was the anti-religious policy of the Soviet government: repressions against the Catholic clergy, social segregation of clergy and believers, and the destruction of the traditional liturgical calendar (due to the introduction of the so-called "continuous working week"). The fact of regular communication between priests in the USSR and the Vatican on a variety of topics is also noted, which indicates the prospects for further search for traces of such communications that can shed light on those aspects of religious life in Soviet Russia that are not reflected in the preserved state and party documentation. The article “Catholics in the Soviet Union: testimonies of ordinary people about the radical transformations of the 1920s-1950s” (ESEJ “History”. 2020. Vol. 11. Issue 6 (92): https://history.jes.su/s207987840010847-0-1/) by N. A. Belyakova and E. O. Shebalina is an analytical review of the conference devoted to the study of sources of non-state origin about the daily life of Catholics in different republics of the USSR mentioned above. The article reflects the new sources of non-state origin introduced into scientific circulation, which allowed to expand the understanding of social cataclysms witnessed by Catholic clergy and laity in the USSR. The documents and stories from the history of Catholics in the USSR presented by the conference participants lead the authors to the conclusion that it is possible to go beyond the institutional history of the Church and demonstrate the prospects of analysing everyday religiosity from different directions, such as the history of communications, the history of emotions, and the history of glocalization. In addition, N. A. Belyakova published a study (ESEJ “History”. 2020. Vol. 11. Issue 7 (93): https://history.jes.su/s207987840010758-2-1/) devoted to the emergence of the discourse of religious freedom in an open letter of Lithuanian Catholics sent to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1977. This discourse had its roots in the changing visions of the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council and then in the development of the Helsinki process. However, N. A. Belyakova also saw the letter as part of a traditional Soviet-dissident human rights discourse, suggesting that the authorities return to the “Leninist” norms of separating Church and state and allowing private teaching and study of religion. The article “The Holy See’s Relief Assistance to the Soviet Citizens Abroad,1941-1947 (on materials of the Apostolic Archives of the Vatican)" (Russia and the Contemporary World. 2020. No. 4. P. 214-228) by E.S. Zhdanova demonstrates that the Holy See was actively interested in the fate of the Russian population, and, although religious affiliation was not a determining factor in the decisions to provide assistance, yet this issue was the object of attention of the Curia. The reasons for this interest, in addition to the general desire to help, were the obstacles to the spread of the Catholic faith in the USSR, which were created by the policy of the Soviet government. The Holy See also did not lose hope for the revival of Catholicism among those Russians who were interested in the sermons of Catholic priests. The Curia was concerned about the fate of the Russian population and tried to find out the fate of Soviet prisoners of war, but their religious affiliation did not influence the decisions of representatives of the Catholic Church to visit the camps. At the same time, collective appeals often received a response from the Holy See, and the latter tried to help those who found themselves in a difficult situation not only by sending liturgical paraphernalia, but also financially. As for personal appeals, based on the cases studied, it is difficult to speculate about any large-scale assistance to their initiators. D.D. Shebalin analysed and translated the materials found by the project team. He systematised and analysed them, made translations of documents from the Vatican Secret Archive, in particular, personal letters of priests who were part of the Catholic Relief Mission in Soviet Russia, as well as performing their clerical functions on the territory of Russia at that time. In addition, D.D. Shebalin presented a draft of his monographic study "The Russian Vector of the Holy See’s Policies in the Context of Modern International Relations", which will be published in 2021. As part of the project, from January 19 to 28, 2020, E. O. Shebalina went on a research trip to Rome (Italy) to work with documents from the Vatican Secret Archive. The researcher identified, selected, digitised, and partially translated personal letters and materials produced by Catholic priests who were part of the Papal Relief Mission in Russia (1922-1924). On April 7-8, 2020, E. O. Shebalina moderated a thematic panel at the International Conference "Catholics in the Soviet Union: Testimonies of Ordinary people about the Radical Transformations of the 1920s-1950s". As part of the project, in 2020, Maria Chiara Dommarco conducted archival work in the Apostolic Vatican Archive, the Central Salesian Archive (Archivio Salesiano Centrale), and the Historical Archive of the State Secretariat (Second section), where she worked on subjects related to the interaction between Catholics and Orthodox in the period from 1917 to 1939. Thus, over the past year, the project participants were able to achieve significant results presented in serious publications in leading Russian and oversees peer-reviewed journals.

 

Publications

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