Изъятие церковных ценностей

On February 23, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee 323 issued a decree on the confiscation of church valuables - a decree that was openly provocative. Since August 1921, the Russian Church has been actively working to raise funds to help the starving. Shortly before this decree, Patriarch Tikhon considered it possible to “allow parish councils and communities to donate precious church decorations and objects that have no liturgical use for the needs of the hungry” 324. But the authorities expected from the Church not so much help to the hungry, but rather a pretext for the destruction of the Church itself. Therefore, she adopted a resolution that legitimized the confiscation of all church valuables without exception, including those used in worship. This placed the church hierarchy and ordinary believers in the conditions of necessary opposition to the state, as they say, “by definition.” As His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon wrote: “We cannot approve the removal from churches, even through voluntary donation, of sacred objects, the use of which is not for liturgical purposes is prohibited by the canons of the Universal Church and is punished by It as sacrilege - laymen by excommunication from Her, clergy by defrocking” 325. This is how Nadezhda Mandelstam described the events that followed this decree: “A message from Patriarch Tikhon was going around, undertaking to organize help for the starving. The cheerful Muscovites chuckled and said that the new state did not need the help of the priestly class. Somewhere in Bogoslovsky Lane - not far from our house - there was a church. I remember that it was there that we noticed a group of people, stopped and learned that a “confiscation” was taking place. It happened completely openly - I don’t know if it was done so openly everywhere. We entered the church and no one stopped us. The priest, elderly, disheveled, was trembling all over, and large tears were rolling down his face as they tore off the vestments and dumped the icons right on the floor. Those who carried out the confiscation led noisy anti-religious propaganda accompanied by the cries of old women and the hooting of crowds enjoying an unprecedented spectacle” 326. Naturally, Bishop Hilarion could relate to these openly blasphemous actions of the authorities only in the spirit of the message of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon: “From the point of view of the Church, such an act is an act of sacrilege” 327. Information about the position of Saint Hilarion on the issue of church values ​​was sometimes conveyed by agents of the GPU to the very “leader of the world proletariat.” Thus, in an extract from the daily report of the MGO GPU No. 328 No. 53 for March 4 and 5, 1922, made for V.I. Lenin, it was said: “On March 4, in the Church of Sergei (Ulyanovskaya Street), during the all-night vigil, Bishop Hilarion delivered a sermon on the issue of confiscation of church valuables for the benefit of the hungry. The sermon had a clear tendency to create a hostile mood among the religious masses against the seizure of valuables” 329. Conclusions of this kind gave the possible arrest of the ruler an air of inevitability. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee is the highest legislative, administrative and supervisory body of state power of the RSFSR from 1918 to 1937. Message of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon on helping the hungry and confiscation of church valuables (02/15/28/1922) // Acts of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon and later documents on the succession of supreme church authority: 1917–1943 / ed. prot. Vladimir Vorobyov and others; comp. M.E. Gubonin. – M.: PSTBI, Brotherhood in the name of the All-Merciful Savior, 1994. P. 190. Mandelstam N. Ya. Memoirs. M., 1990. T. 2. P. 114–115. Quote by: John (Ludishchev), Hierom. Sretensky Monastery in 1922. URL: http:// www.pravoslavie.ru/52386.html Message of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon on helping the hungry and confiscation of church valuables (15/28 02.1922) //Acts of His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon... P. 190. Moscow provincial department of the State Political Administration. Report from the Moscow provincial department of the GPU about the sermon of Bishop Hilarion (Troitsky) of Verei against the seizure of church valuables // Kremlin Archives. Politburo and the Church: 1922–1925. In 2 books. – Novosibirsk, M.: Siberian Chronograph, ROSSPEN. Book 2. 1998. P. 28.