V.I. Rudich’s Memoirs from the Collection of Selected Documents and Memoirs of White Emigrants at the State Archive of the Russian Federation as a Source for the History of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1917-1920s

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to publish, introduce into science, and critique as a source study excerpts from Vera Ivanovna Rudich’s memoirs, which relate to the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in the post-revolutionary period. The memoirs are housed in the State Archive of the Russian Federation in collection 5881, called «Collection of Selected Documents and Memoirs of Emigrants». In the State Archive of Russian Federation the memoirs ended up in the fonds of the Russian Historical Archive Abroad, which was moved to the USSR in 1945. The events described in the memoirs take place in Volyn in 1918–1919. The article indicates the main milestones of V. I. Rudic’s biography, reveals the circumstances that accompanied the writing of memoirs. The given extracts of memoirs are accompanied by source criticism, the concepts introduced in the text of V. I. Rudich’s memoirs are specified and the circumstances of events briefly marked in the text are disclosed. The research employed the systematic, analytical, comparativist, source-critical, and biographical methods. The analysis of unpublished memoirs suggests that the writing of the memoirs was preceded by the creation of a diary, which has not yet been found in archival depositories. The events described in these fragments of V. I. Rudich’s memoirs reflect the attitude toward the Russian Orthodox Church, its traditions, and the priesthood among the rural population of Ukraine at the initial stage of the Civil War and may be of interest to church historians engaged in this scientific problem.