The Orthodox Church in the Stavropol Territory during the persecutions of 1918

Abstract

In the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of priests, monks and laity of the Russian Church were subjected to persecution unprecedented in Russian history for openly professing the Orthodox faith. Many of them, like the holy martyrs of the early centuries of Christianity, demonstrated their faithfulness to God and their sacrificial love for their neighbours under the threat of hardship and even death. In Stavropol, the starting point of godless persecution was 1918, which coincided with the proclamation of Soviet power in the province and the beginning of a civil war on its territory. The materials of the Special Commission under the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia to investigate the atrocities of the Bolsheviks, the Holy Council of the Orthodox Russian Church of 1917–1918 and the South-Eastern Russian Church Council of 1919, as well as local periodicals and sources of personal origin trace both tragic changes in the position of the Orthodox clergy and church communities in the south of Russia, and the position of the Church in conditions of open persecution of religion and fierce civil confrontation. The names of the clergymen of the Stavropol diocese who suffered in 1918 for the faith of Christ are named. Dates are given according to the Julian calendar.