Bishop Pamfil (Lyaskovsky) of Starodub and the Clergy of Gomel Province During the Removal of Jewelry from Churches and the Beginning of the Renovationist Movement

Abstract

Pamphil (Lyaskovsky), Bishop of Krasnodar and Kuban, passed away in a very unusual way for the higher clergy. On January 10, 1936, he was found hanged from a tree in the garden of the house where he had lived recently; there was a note in his pocket: «I ask you not to blame anyone for my death…». The grave of the Vladyka has always had a popular veneration, which has increased many times over the past 30 years. A chapel was built above it, where two thick notebooks are kept, which contain testimonies of God’s miraculous help through prayers to Bishop Pamphilus. The archpastor’s venerators are convinced that his «suicide» was in fact a staging by the NKVD officers. This article presents documentary information about the stay of Bishop Pamphilus at the vicar Starodub cathedra (1922 – early 1923), in the context of the church history of the Gomel province of that time, church-state relations and internal church life in the Gomel province, in the context of the ongoing removal of jewelry from temples and the development of the Renovationist movement. On the example of the future ideological fighter against Renovationism, Bishop Pamphil (Lyaskovsky) (1883–1936), the author shows the difficulties of the position of the Russian episcopate in the Soviet state in the early 1920s, during the period of anti-religious persecution and the church schism supported by the atheist authorities in every possible way.