Two cases of the Termigoyevsky NKVD (on the history of church-state relations in the east of Kuban in 1937–1938)

Abstract

This article is devoted to the events of church-state relations in the USSR in the 30s of the XX century. The publication of the «Stalin Constitution», the All-Union Population Census and the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR scheduled for December 12, 1937 caused a new wave of the most severe persecution of representatives of the religious community, including the clergy, monastics and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church. The studied biographies of the priest of the village of Vozdvizhenskaya Peter Aleynikov and the priest of the village of Petropavlovsk John Zhogin allow us to clarify the events of the church history of the above-mentioned villages in the first half of the XX century. In the course of the research, documents of various archival institutions, including foreign ones, were used. Materials of criminal investigation cases provided by the archive of the Federal Security Service Administration are of particular value. The proposed article is a step towards the further study of church-state relations in the USSR in the first half of the XX century.