In the RUSSIAN Empire, from the end of the 17th century until 1917, all Orthodox Christians were required to confess. Parishioners ' compliance with this standard of pious behavior was monitored both by the secular authorities and, in fact, by the Church itself, mainly through its priests, who were required to make detailed records of confessions held in their parishes and submit these records annually to the diocesan consistories. Consistory documentation, police reports, church and liturgical publications, memoirs, paintings, elements of church interiors, stories for children, works of classical literature - all these sources agree on one thing: govenie - a week - long preparation for confession and communion-was an important marker of the religious life of all strata of Russian society. In pre-revolutionary Russia, confessing one's sins to a priest was not only a deeply personal matter for a parishioner, but also a clear confirmation of loyalty to the autocratic state.

What happened after such a symbiosis of confession as individual participation in the church sacrament and demonstrative public and political action ceased to exist? Although it is extremely difficult to determine the exact time of termination of this symbiosis, an example recorded in the documents of the Kazan Ecclesiastical Academy can be cited as a kind of marker indicating a cardinal change in the situation.

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consistories. One worker was convicted of murder in a drunken brawl. Information about him was entered in a special police file, which contained information about convicts and their crimes. This case was usually automatically referred to the consistory, so that in addition to the punishment imposed by the court, the criminals were also subjected to penance. Of course, the Kazan police also knew about the reverse standard procedure - halving the term of penance if a civil court imposed a prison sentence or any other punishment. There was a well-developed practice of coordinating the terms of these two punishments - imprisonment under the verdict of a secular court and ecclesiastical penance under the decision of the consistory. When, at the end of February 1917, the Kazan police sent information about the case of a worker convicted of murder to the consistory, so that he would be subjected to penance, it was done in full accordance with the established routine procedure. However, at the beginning of April - a month after the abdication of Nicholas II and the formation of the Provisional Government-the prosecutor of the Kazan District Court sent a brief note to the Consistory, which, in particular, stated: "I ask you to leave without execution all my messages that followed up to March 17 of this year regarding the surrender of persons convicted by court sentences He also ordered the institutions under the jurisdiction of the Consistory to do penance in the church."1
After the February Revolution, not only the practice discussed above stopped. The last case of confession in the four main consistories of the Empire dates back to the beginning of 1917. Since 1918, all consistories have been closed. As soon as there were no consistories, centralized diocesan documentation was also discontinued. Individual priests in their parishes continued to record baptisms, weddings, and funerals in metric books. In some cases, they also reported participating in confession. However, there was no longer any form of information about the confession requested by the diocesan authorities, nor the consistories themselves, to which such reports would be sent.

1. National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (NART), F. 4 (Kazan Spiritual Consistory). Op. 149. d. 34 (On the abolition of the tradition of the guilty to church repentance, 1917). l. 1.

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In this fundamentally new situation, in fact, the main problem of studying confession lies in the Soviet era In pre-revolutionary Russia, there were clear official prescriptions concerning this sacrament. But in Soviet times, similar documents were simply not available. In contrast to the law adopted by Peter I in 1721. The Soviet legislation, which separated the Church from the state, did not deal at all with the problem of confession, which determined the new order of church-state relations.2 The harassment that priests were subjected to under the Soviet regime (bans on parochial education, publishing, and public worship outside the church premises) did not apply to confession. In fact, for researchers working in the pre-revolutionary or post-Soviet periods, the study of confession in Soviet times is a kind of methodological challenge. When most churches were closed, did confession even exist as such? Are there any signs that it has been preserved?

The reconstruction of the history of confession in this era is also complicated by numerous assumptions. For example, even in the first years of Soviet rule, priests experienced intense pressure from the Cheka and the State security agencies that later replaced it. These structures demanded to violate the secrecy of confession and inform them about what parishioners repent at the lectern to their confessors. 3 (There is some truth in this: in 1923, priest Dmitry Flerin was sent to the Solovetsky camp for refusing to violate the secrecy of confession. 4) Direct and indirect pressure on priests forced them to look for ways to overcome the obstacles put up by the authorities. Batiushki and their spiritual children I will come-

2. Legislative acts of January 23, 1918 (on the separation of Church and state), of April 8, 1929 (on religious associations), and of October 1, 1929 (instructions of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs)became the closest to the topic under consideration. Moscow: Bezbozhnik Publ., 1930, pp. 6-25, 170-171.

3. For example, Bishop Leonty (Filipovich) describes cases of such pressure in Ukraine in his manuscript "Political Control over the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union", preserved in the Bakhmetev Archive of Russian and Eastern European History and Culture at Columbia University in New York (l.127, 134-136).

4. Information about O. Dmitry Flerin is included in the permanent exhibition of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp in the Solovetsky State Historical, Architectural and Natural Museum-Reserve.

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new ways of confession were developed. Moreover, the laity themselves not only tried to hide the fact that they were believers, but also sought to protect the priests from the ambiguous position in which they were diligently pushed by representatives of the Soviet regime hostile to the Church. As a result, the traditional private form of confessing in the priest's ear soon disappeared, and new ways of offering penance began to be practiced instead. General confession has become both a norm and a characteristic feature of church life under the Soviet regime.5
But there is one problem with this generally accepted model: there is no direct evidence for it. In Soviet times, the equivalent of the Peter I supplement to the Ecclesiastical Regulations - the "Supplement on the rules of the Church's clergy and the Order of Monks" - did not appear. In it, priests were authorized on behalf of the see (or rather, they were strictly obliged to do so) inform the authorities of any treasonous intentions they hear during confession 6. On the other hand, the mere absence of legislation in Soviet times does not in itself mean anything. Before the revolution, this requirement existed on paper, but was rarely implemented in practice.7 Could this trend have reversed after 1918? There were no official instructions from the authorities, but nevertheless there was a practice of denunciation? The Soviet authorities never recognized that priests had any legal right to keep confidential information about contacts with their parishioners. Conviction on anonymous charges was not only permitted, but also strongly encouraged in the trials of so-called enemies of the people.8 Even if people knew that their priest was an agent of the NKVD, it didn't follow at all-

Job (Gumerov), hieromonk. 5. Repentance is the foundation of spiritual life//Orthodox faith. N 44. September 2010. p. 5, 19.

6. The Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire. Sobranie pervoe [First Meeting], vol. 6, No. 4022, p. 701.

7. There is evidence of only two cases (in 1734 and 1742) of the conviction of priests who carried out instructions to inform the authorities about anti-State intentions, which they learned about during confession. One of them was stripped of his spiritual dignity, his nostrils were torn and he was exiled to eternal hard labor in Siberia, and the other was executed. See: RGIA. F. 796. Op. 15. D. 144. L. 1-23; Op. 23. D. 366. L. 83.

Kozlov V.A. 8. Denunciation and Its Functions in Soviet Governance from the Archive of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs//Stalinism: New Directions. Ed. by Sheila Fitzpatrick. Routledge, 1999. P. 117 - 141.

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It was alleged that he passed on to the authorities information obtained during the confession.9 If the priest intended to accuse someone, then he could do so without more or less solid evidence at all. Therefore, it does not matter whether such an accusation would be based on a fact obtained during confession or not.

This, by the way, was another reason why the pre-revolutionary civil courts refused to consider information heard by a priest in confession. This information, from a legal point of view, was no more trustworthy than any other 10. In the Ukraine in 1928, members of the clergy of all faiths, including Mennonites, Lutherans, Muslims, and Jews, worked as informers about their co-religionists. Moreover, they even received a certain monetary reward from the Soviet state for such activities.11 But in any case, the sacrament of confession was not a particularly valuable source of information, since it is not practiced in most faiths. They could be punished for an ordinary presence in the church, even if only for a short time - solely out of curiosity, or for wearing a cross on the body. Attending or not attending confession was irrelevant here. In other words, the problem remains: it is very difficult to say with certainty whether priests, under pressure from the state security agencies, disclosed the information they received during confession, and even more so to draw conclusions based on such an assumption.

Changes in confessional practice: periodization

When considering how confession changed during the Soviet era, it is advisable to start from the following periodization::

9. On the controversy about the "informant" activities of the priest Nikolai Kolchitsky in 1943, see: Sokolova N. N. Under the roof of the Supreme, Moscow: Publishing House of the Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian, 2002, p. 59.

10. For the discussion related by Senator N. S. Tagantsev about the use of information obtained during confession, see: GARF. F. 564. Op. 1. D. 641. L. 1-3.

11. Центральний державний архів громадських об'єднань України (ЦДАГОУ). Ф. 1. Оп. 16. Спр. 34. Авк. 94-95. The author thanks Lyudmila Grinevich for the information about this link.

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1) 1918-1928-from the Decree on the separation of Church and State and School and Church to the eve of the First Five-year Plan;

2.) 1929-1941-from the era of the First Five-year Plan to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War;

3) 1941-1958-from some easing of the Church during the war to the new anti-religious campaign launched under Khrushchev;

4) 1958-1964-Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign;

5) 1964-1988-from the attempts of the Soviet regime to use the Church as an instrument of foreign political influence to the beginning of new relations between the Church and the Soviet state in connection with the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus.

For the entire decade after its publication in 1918. Under the Decree on the separation of Church and State and school and Church, believers faced more vital issues than the possibility of confession. It was unclear whether there would still be functioning churches and monasteries in a particular area, whether there would be someone to serve in them, and finally, whether the local church would be under the jurisdiction of the Renovationists, the patriarch, or his locum tenens. Given the powerful state anti-religious propaganda that has developed in the country, as well as after the natural abolition of the annual confession required under the autocratic regime and the corresponding parish communion statistics, one might expect a rapid increase in indifferentism towards the norms of church life, especially among active supporters of the Soviet government. Pre-revolutionary government supervision of the observance of the rules of church piety not only stopped at once, but turned in the opposite direction - in fact, prohibitive - direction.

From the point of view of performing the sacrament of confession, the situation could even improve. The participants of the Local Council of 1917-1918 have already discussed in a practical way the situation when a large number of people sought to confess, especially on church or temple holidays. This was most clearly felt in the monasteries, where numerous pilgrims flocked. Against this background, some participants in the Council believed that a general confession, during which the priest reads out a list of the most common sins to the assembled parishioners, and then invites those who wish to additionally and individually repent of their misdeeds, can be not only practically convenient, but also spiritually useful.-

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noah 12. Before the revolution, the general confession was not something exclusive. For example, the holy Righteous Father John Sergiev (Kronshtadt) used the common confession in his parish in Kronshtadt at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. General confession was a common occurrence during religious processions. Regimental priests of the Russian army resorted to some semblance of a general confession before the battles during the First World War. Priests could similarly absolve people, for example, on board a ship in distress or in other life-threatening circumstances.13 Such accepted types of general confession in church practice explain why out of the 54 members of the Liturgical Department of the Local Council of 1917-1918, only four strongly objected to general confession, considering it harmful; however, only four members considered that general confession should or could become the daily norm14. Thus, even before the establishment of the communist regime, during which most members of the clergy and religious thinkers began to approve of the practice of general confession, the majority of the clergy considered this method of penance quite acceptable in exceptional circumstances.

The first decade of the Soviet regime's existence was just such an exceptional circumstance. The common confession began to be used more widely, especially in Moscow and Petrograd-Leningrad. And this was not caused by the fear that the content of the conversation between the penitent and his confessor might become known to the informants who informed the authorities. The reason here could have been much simpler. At a time when incarceration or even death sentences were becoming a dreadful routine in the USSR, some Orthodox Christians began receiving communion (and, consequently, confessing) as often as possible. Therefore, for many believers, repentance is brought under the constant threat of arrest or other crimes.

12. For the opinions expressed at the beginning of the 20th century on the general confession, see Reviews of diocesan bishops on the issue of Church reform, Part II, St. Petersburg, 1906, pp. 334-335. Poselyanin also stated his position on this issue long before the Local Council. See, for example: Poselyanin E. Confession/ / Church voice. 1907. N 15. P. 414.

Shavelsky G., protopresbyter. 13. Orthodox Pastoral Care, St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the Russian Christian Humanitarian Institute, 1996, pp. 597-602.

Balashov N., Archpriest. 14. Na puti k liturgicheskom vozrozhdeniyu [On the way to the liturgical Revival], Round Table on Religious Education and Diakonia, 2001, p. 392.

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the special circumstances in the course of not an individual, but a general confession, were not evidence of their cowardly shame. Rather, on the contrary, such a method of repentance spoke of their increased religiosity.15
For many who aspired to a deeply religious life, including regular confession to a confessor, the 1920s were a time of introduction to a unique spiritual experience-the phenomenon of secret monasticism as a specific religious movement in the USSR. Protopriest Valentin Sventsitsky, who criticized the general confession because it, in his opinion, discouraged believers from feeling responsible for the sins they committed, in 1921-1926 gathered circles in which he called on believers to secretly become a monk (sometimes without taking tonsure)16. People who were inclined to this "early Christian" lifestyle lived mainly in large cities. For them, personal confession to a confessor, often even outside the walls of a church or monastery, became the foundation of their spiritual life.17 Such regular, secret, extra-ecclesiastical confession and revelation of thoughts to the confessor were practiced throughout the Soviet era.18 It is possible that the persecution of the Church led to the emergence of a special type of believer who would not have accepted monasticism until 1917. Thus, both confession and the monastic life itself acquired a significance that they did not have before 1917.19

At the same time, ordinary peasants from the Russian and Belarusian hinterlands, who later recalled the 1920s, perceived that time completely differently. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was able to record the testimonies of people born between 1900 and 1910. After 1917 they continued to go to confession as before, only once a year. Moreover, according to their testimonies, in the first period after the establishment of Soviet power, changes in the way this sacrament was held were extremely slow.-

Shavelsky G., protopresbyter. 15. Edict op. p. 605.

Herman, abbot. 16. New Russian Confessor Archpriest Valentin Sventitsky//The Orthodox Word. 1983. July-August. P. 133.

Wynot J. 17. Monasteries Without Walls: Secret Monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1928 - 1939//Church History. March 2002. Vol. 71. N 1. P. 63 - 79.

18. The testimony of N. N. Sokolova about secret nuns who lived in the 1940s under the guise of a white-shirt artel near Elder Isaiah, see: Sokolova N. N. Decree. op. pp. 64-66.

Beglov A. 19. Ascetic writing of the era of persecution as a system of marginalia//Alpha and Omega. 2009. N 1 (54). pp. 121-125.

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significant, if not completely absent. In addition, ordinary villagers had no reason to fear that the secrecy of their confession would be violated and their repentance to the priest would be revealed.20 One of the greatest Russian elders of the 20th century, Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev) (1910-1996) recalled that the nuns of the Mologsky monastery, whom he personally knew, continued to go to confession in the Tolga Monastery throughout the 1920s. They brought butter, sour cream, and pea flour to the monks there as gifts from their abbess. At the same time, according to the elder, only 12 monks remained in the Tolga monastery at that time.21
The above facts show that for ordinary lay people who observed the norms of church life, the pre-revolutionary customs of confession remained unchanged throughout the 1920s.

Really serious changes related to confession began only in the late 1920s, during the First Five-Year Plan. The main reason for the collapse of confession as such (as well as the cessation of all parish life) was the closure of churches. As you know, by 1939 there were only a little more than a hundred active churches in the entire Soviet Union, and not a single monastery remained. In most regions, there was only one church, and 25 regions turned out to be completely "churchless" 22. Oral history data confirms these statistics. For example, according to the testimony of Boris Petrovich Okopny from Melitopol (born in 1926, both of his grandfathers were priests), the closure of churches in Zaporozhye began in 1933. By 1935, only two existing churches remained in Zaporozhye. The clergy were partly arrested, and partly went underground, trying not to attract attention to themselves. Therefore, the church's sacraments as such disappeared with the end of church life itself.

20. Memoirs of Maria Silvestrovna Plyshevskaya (recorded March 15-18, 1993) and Marfa Samoilovna Shekhova (recorded April 1987), both of whom lived in Belarus during the period under review.

21. My dear ones. Stories and sermons by Archimandrite Pavel (Gruzdev). Yaroslavl: Kitezh Publ., 2004, p. 156.

22. See, for example: GARF. F. 5263. Op. 1. D. 891 (Kuibyshev region). L. 2-6. See also: Chumachenko T. A. Gosudarstvo, Pravoslavnaya tserkva i verushchie [State, Orthodox Church and believers]. 1941-1961. Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1999.

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The German occupation during the Great Patriotic War led to the revival of church life in the territories occupied by German troops. When the Germans entered Zaporizhia in October 1941, services were resumed in churches closed under Soviet rule. The priests started confessing to the parishioners again. The form of this sacrament did not change: everyone offered penance personally to the priest, while the prayer rule was read out before confession,and after - if the confessor received communion-prayers of thanksgiving. 23 Okopny's testimony about the revival of church sacraments under the Germans in their pre-revolutionary form is also confirmed by other residents of Ukraine of the same generation. For example, the mother of seven-year-old Tamara Plyshevskaya, after her first confession in 1942 in Kirovohrad, sent her daughter back to put a donation to the priest (the girl did not know what it was supposed to do)24. In Kharkiv, in the only functioning church that was shared with the Renovationists, those who wanted to confess were previously registered with the headman or the deacon.25 The above facts show that during the years of brutal persecution of the Church under the Soviet regime, neither priests nor parishioners have forgotten what confession is and how it should take place. As soon as it became possible to revive church life in the territories occupied by the Germans, confessional practice resumed in the very form in which it existed before 1917. The succession tradition was destroyed, but not destroyed.

In the unoccupied territories of the USSR under Soviet rule, some churches closed before the war also resumed worship services. In 1942, the book "The Truth about Religion in Russia", prepared by the Moscow Patriarchate, was published. This publication was intended to carry out a propaganda task-to expose the emigrant testimonies about the persecution of the Church in the USSR and the rumors that spread about the tolerant attitude of Germans in the occupied territories to the Orthodox Church.-

23. Memoirs of Boris Petrovich Okopny (recorded on February 16, 2010).

24. Memoirs of Tamara Ivanovna Plyshevskaya (recorded on February 15, 2010).

25. Memoirs of my father, Archpriest Boris Ivanovich Kitsenko (recorded on February 15, 2010). The loss of popularity of the Renovationists and, consequently, the flock is confirmed in other sources. See, for example: Sokolova N. N. Decree op. P. 17. On renovationism and its crisis, see also: Freeze G. Counter-Reform in Russian Orthodoxy: Popular Response to Religious Innovation, 1922 - 1925//Slavic Review. Summer 1995. Vol. 54. N 2. P. 305 - 339.

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voslaviya. This extremely ideologized and pro-Soviet publication stated: "This year, as in the past, Moscow churches were crowded with worshippers, especially those who were sick during Lent. All sought to confess and receive communion. " 26 But even from this quote, it is clear that the flourishing of church life noted in it was observed only in the last two years - that is, since the beginning of the war. And in 1944, as a response of the authorities to the manifestations of exceptional loyalty on the part of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Church was granted the right to become involved in the ideological support of the ongoing war. Clergymen began to appear at patriotic events, prayer services were held in honor of the Red Army, and the Church donated funds to the needs of the front. The confession did not play any role at that time - at least, it is not mentioned in the available documents.27
Stalin's meeting with the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church in September 1943 marked the official recognition of the Church as an integral part of Soviet society. From that time until 1959 (with two brief pauses in 1948-1949 and in 1954), the Soviet authorities practically did not demonstrate their hostility to the activities of the Church - activities that were extremely regulated and limited by a colossal number of prohibitions.28 Nevertheless, the heavy legacy of previous years (the closure of churches, persecution, and anti-church propaganda) made itself felt, and in a rather tangible form: for a huge (no matter what!) the number of believers was simply not enough priests. For example, in Moscow and the Moscow region at the time of the end of the war, there were 215 churches in operation. By the 1980s, their numbers had dropped by 20 percent-and this is in an area that was home to several million people. In the Small Cathedral of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, between 800 and 1,000 people received communion on Sundays and public holidays. 29 With such a quantitative discrepancy between pastors and the flock, the general confession (when the priest lists the greatest number of pastors) is considered to be the most significant.-

26. Pravda o religii v Rossii [The Truth about Religion in Russia], Moscow: Moskovskaya Patriarchiya, 1942, p. 215.

27. GARF. F. 6991 (Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church). Op. 2. d. 12. l. 2-6.

28. See: Chumachenko T. A. Edict. op. S. X.

29. Ibid., pp. 4-5; Golubtsov N., Archpriest. [Introduction]//Conversations before Confession, Moscow: Moscow Metochion of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 2009, p. 5; Job (Gumerov), Hieromonk. Edict. op. p. 5.

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the most common sins, and parishioners listen, repent inwardly, and approach the priest for individual confession only if they have something else to repent of) it has become the norm. Some, like Archbishop Grigory (Chukov) of Leningrad, strongly opposed this "deviation from liturgical norms." In 1948, it was supported by some provincial bishops.30 Nevertheless, from the post-war period onwards, general confession remained a widespread practice throughout the subsequent Soviet era.31
Confession in the post-war period

The changes that confession underwent after the moderate and cautious revival of the Church, which began during the war, did not necessarily lead to a deterioration in its quality or to the formalization of the repentance offered by believers. Thanks to talented pastors, this mostly general confession also bore spiritual fruit. Archpriests Alexander Voskresensky (1875-1950), Tikhon Pelikh (1895-1983), Vasily Serebrennikov (1907-1996), Alexander Tolgsky (1880-1962), and Vsevolod Shpiller (1902-1984) are just some of the most famous Moscow confessors who continued the tradition of pre - revolutionary Moscow confessors. Archpriest Nikolai Golubtsov (1900 - 1963) spent 14 years receiving confessions in the Church of the Ordination of the Sacrament, which was reopened in 194332.

In his pastoral work, Fr. Nikolai faced two complications. First, the number of its parishioners was such that it excluded individual confession. In the church where Fr. Nicholas, as in almost all other churches, confession was taken before the liturgy, during the reading of the hours. This practice was due to restrictions that did not exist before 1917. Churchwardens appointed in coordination with the Soviet administrative bodies were instructed to open churches no earlier than

30. Word on November 8, 1944 / / Grigory (Chukov), Metropolitan. Izbrannye slova, rechi i statii [Selected words, speeches and articles], L., 1954 [typescript], see: GARF. F. 6991. Op. 2. d. 34a. l. 57.

31. However, according to N. N. Sokolova, people who had closer relations with their confessors had closer access to private confession. See: Sokolova N. N. Decree, op. p. 78.

Golubtsov P., Archpriest. 32. Edict, Op. p. 5.

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20-30 minutes before the service starts, and close them almost immediately after it ends 33. In such conditions, it was simply impossible to accept a full-fledged individual confession from all comers. Secondly, in the 1950s and 1960s, the reading of sermons was also strictly regulated. Fr. Nikolai found a way to circumvent both of these restrictions - a way that other priests began to adopt. He began to practice reading sermons just before confessions.34
An example of Fr Nicholas ' innovations is his sermon on February 28 (March 13), 1953. It was Friday of the Fourth week of Lent. The priest combined the interpretation of the liturgical content of this day with what parishioners should remember the next day during confession and communion. After recounting the repentance of the robber who was crucified next to the Lord and called upon Him to remember him when He came to His Kingdom (Lk 23: 42), the priest called on everyone to become like this robber and preserve this feeling until the last moment of confession: "Throw out all the abomination of sin from your soul and go away (after confession. - N. K.), you will feel light... Confess everything to God - do not be ashamed to reveal to God your sins and carnal evil thoughts, for they inevitably visit all people in their youth and sometimes in old age. < ... > Approaching the Holy Chalice, be sure of the forgiveness of sins. In confession, do not repeat previously confessed sins - they are forgiven. If you still feel tormented in your heart by your confessed sins, it means that you have not done enough good deeds to stifle and banish forever this stench from your immortal soul. " 35
Those closest to Fr Nicholas from among his parishioners noted that his masterful combination of preaching, general and individual confessions brought amazing results. "For the sake of confession," Protodeacon S. Golubtsov recalled, " he had a small church [Fr. Nicholas - N. K.] and on weekdays it was crowded with people. The general confession, against the very name of which the soul usually revolts, always left a deep impression on him, and it seemed to everyone that the word fr. This was sent to:-

33. This fact was cited in her memoirs by Praskovya Vasilyevna Nikitina (recorded in St. Petersburg in January 1992). See also: Job (Gumerov), Hieromonk. Edict. op. p. 5.

Golubtsov N., Archpriest. 34. Decree, Op. pp. 6-7.

Golubtsov P., Archpriest. 35. Decree, Op. pp. 56-59.

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but to him. Confession (or rather, the sermon before confession) has never been standard in content. It always began with a brief summary of the church event or memory celebrated on that day, sometimes with the Gospel or the Apostle read at the liturgy, and then on this basis there was not just a list of sins, but a sermon of a righteous and correct life that was understandable to everyone, penetrating into all the corners of the soul and clearing up the conscience, a call to prayer, repentance and correction And when you go to the lectern and say something that is particularly burdensome to your conscience, Fr. Nicholas never hurried you, but neither did he delay you, nor did he wonder at your sin, nor did he condemn the penitent soul. If he found it necessary, he immediately gave a brief and decisive advice or said:: The simplicity with which he accepted confession made it easier for the penitent to confess any sin. " 36 The religious writer Sergei Iosifovich Fudel, who confessed to Fr. Nicholas, wrote: "I will say for myself and for many others that for many years there has never been a case when we returned from confession with Fr. Nicholas with the same dry soul"37. It is not surprising that after the death of Fr. Nicholas, his spiritual children, grieving for their loss, called the priest "the last Moscow confessor."

Other prominent Moscow priests continued the confessional traditions of their predecessors in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, in O. Dmitry Dudko, Fr. Vsevolod Shpiller and Fr. Alexander Me had large confessional families. Priests used the first confession of newly converted adults to instruct them in Orthodox life. Such confessions usually consisted of several conversations, either in the church or even at home, during which the priest learned the spiritual biography of his newly baptized spiritual child and gave him recommendations on how to strengthen the faith. 38 These confessional techniques, which were practiced in the 1970s and early 1980s, as well as in the early 1980s, were also used by the clergy. other circumstances that developed then

Golubtsov S., Protodeacon. 36. Archpriest Nikolai Golubtsov. Obituary//United by faith, hope, Love and Kind, Moscow, 1999, p. 191.

Memoirs of father Nikolai Alexandrovich Golubtsov//Collected works. In 3 volumes, vol. 1. Moscow: Russian Way, 2001, p. 225.

38. See: Dudko D., Archpriest. About our hope. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1975; interview with O. D. Dudko (recorded by the author on June 19, 1979). For the confessional experience of O. Alexander Me, see: Hamant Y. Alexander Men': A Witness for Contemporary Russia (A Man for our Times). Torrance, CA: Oakwood Publications, 1995. P. 120 - 121.

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ecclesiastical customs testified to the cardinal changes that had taken place in Russian Orthodoxy in comparison with the pre-revolutionary era. What before 1917 was considered a matter of course for Orthodox Christians and was performed by everyone, regardless of the degree of their personal spiritual experience (the first confession at the age of seven, which was thoroughly prepared for, and then-by inertia - once a year around Easter), became the lot of a minority of believers in the post - war period. The opposite conclusion is also true: confession has evolved from a rite previously performed even by nominal Orthodox Christians to a practice peculiar only to a small group within the community of Soviet Orthodox Christians and at the same time the most fundamental for their Orthodox identity.

Changing perceptions of sin and punishment

Did believers under the Soviet regime begin to put some other content into the concept of sin-different from what was generally accepted before the revolution? So, M. S. Plyshevskaya in late 1938-early 1939. committed an act that at that time was called speculation. She tried to resell her boots and felt boots at the Kirovohrad market. When the police approached the place where Plyshevskaya was standing with her goods, she managed to disappear into the crowd and thus avoid arrest. She was well aware that such a trade was illegal and that if she was caught, she would inevitably be punished. However, perhaps due to the fact that during the NEP era Plyshevskaya sold various products at fairs, she did not perceive the trade itself as something sinful and did not talk about it in confession. And in the late 1930s, Plyshevskaya also treated her shoe "business" not as sinful, and when she again had the opportunity to confess, she did not repent to the priest of "profanity" 39.

The above story is suggestive. Did others repent of sins like the one Plyshevskaya committed by engaging in such "speculation"? Is it possible now to restore the very state of believers when confession began to return to church life again: if they did not repent of something, it was simply out of forgetfulness or out of conscious unwillingness?

39. Memoirs of Maria Silvestrovna Plyshevskaya (recorded in April 1993).

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Moreover, the general confession created favorable conditions for concealing sins that believers for some reason did not want to admit.

A valuable source for clarifying this problem is the "Table Books" for priests published at the end of the Soviet era (in 1979, 1983, and 1988). (It is a very telling fact that no such manuals were published between 1914 and 1979,40) Particularly informative from this point of view are the comments in the sermons recommended for reading before confession. From these manuals, you can learn how priests interpreted, for example, the commandment "Thou shalt not steal" and how they tried to instill a proper understanding of the fulfillment of this commandment in their flock.

For example, the Handbook, published in 1983, warned priests that penitents often understand the commandment "Thou shalt not steal" in a straightforward way - considering it an indication of the inadmissibility of theft. Therefore, the priest was instructed before confession to draw the attention of parishioners to the fact that "embezzlement is any misappropriation of other people's property, both their own and public <...> the concept of usury also includes the resale of food and industrial products at inflated prices (speculation). Stowaway travel on public transport is also an act that should be considered a violation of the 8th commandment. " 41
The additions made (as well as the removal of those fragments that were present earlier) are the most eloquent answer to the question of why the Church needed other "Desktop Books" and what the correction of old samples of priestly manuals amounted to. The most remarkable change in the Soviet "Reference Books"compared to the pre-revolutionary ones was the correspondence of the sacrament to the social status of the confessors. "Along with people who are deeply and sincerely believers, "the 1983 Reference Book, which has been repeatedly cited, said," people who have little connection with the Church come to the lectern and make confession for the first time in adulthood. Most of the parishioners belong to Katya-

40. On confessions in this edition, see: The Priest's Handbook, vol. 4. Moscow: Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1983, pp. 242-287.

41. Ibid., p. 281.

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If we take into account the fact that the overwhelming majority of believers are elderly and elderly people who have not been able to get a full-fledged education and are completely devoid of systematic knowledge about the Church, the sacraments and dogma, then the pastor, first of all, should try at least once during each confession. It is necessary to explain the basic truths of Christianity to a minimum extent. " 42
Of course, representatives of the pre-revolutionary clergy also mourned the dullness and superstition of their flock. But at the beginning of the XX century. they could also be sure that Orthodox people go to confession for the first time at the age of seven, and then attend this sacrament about once a year, and this order does not change. Naturally, by the end of the 1970s, such a tradition had long ceased to exist. For example, Yevgenia Nikolaevna Kuzovenkova was baptized only in 1982 at the age of 60. She was afraid to be baptized, as she worked as a doctor and was a member of the CPSU. In addition, she was afraid that her children might have problems at school and at work because of this. And the confession to Yevgeny Nikolaevna did not frighten. After her conversion, she confessed and received communion approximately once a month until her death in 2003. 43

Realizing that confession (as well as other fundamental principles of church life) is no longer something that is accepted unconditionally by the whole society (especially by young people), the priests no longer asked the penitents questions about certain sins: "Every priest who has served in a parish for quite a long time knows from experience, "the same Handbook said,"that it is rare for anyone to confess to theft, robbery, or idolatry in confession, let alone premeditated murder, which is not even heard of - they are rare among Christians these days." Other fragments of Soviet "Reference Books" reflected the changes that have taken place over the past century in the perception of issues related to a person's sexual life. "The question concerning the sin of hand-lashing (masturbation, slav. - malakia), - it is noted in the "Reference Book", - is appropriate in relation to boys, young men and single men.-

42. Ibid., p. 249. N. S. Khrushchev spoke about the" return " of Soviet rural residents to the Church. See: Stone A. B. Overcoming Peasant Backwardness: The Khrushchev Antireligious Campaign and the Rural Soviet Union//Russian Review. April 2008. N 67. P. 296 - 320.

43. Memoirs of Yevgenia Nikolaevna Kuzovenkova (recorded in 1997).

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44. The crisis of family and family life in the USSR, which was growing worse, was also reflected in the Reference Book: "At confession, you have to listen to stories about tragic family conflicts, most often arising on the basis of excessive use of wine or infidelity of one of the spouses. Often in such cases, people ask for advice on whether it is worth preserving such a marriage and whether it is not better to terminate it. " 45
Questions about the sins of infanticide and abortion in confession with women were also contained in pre-revolutionary manuals. But in the Soviet-era" Reference Books " (abortion was legalized in the USSR in 1955), the arguments on this topic became even more detailed and elaborated. For example, the following comment draws attention to itself: "A woman who is outside the Church is warned against this act by medical workers, explaining the danger and moral impurity of this operation. However, an unbelieving woman is free to do with herself as she sees fit. For a woman who admits her involvement in the Orthodox Church (and such, apparently, should be considered any baptized woman who comes to church for confession), artificial termination of pregnancy is categorically unacceptable and excusable only in exceptional cases when, for health reasons, further gestation threatens her life. " 46 The "Handbook" explicitly pointed out the inadmissibility of perceiving abortion as an ordinary sin that must be resolved in a general confession: "Sometimes individual priests mention this terrible sin in a general confession along with others and let it go without even talking to the sinner in a personal confession, without finding out

44. Desktop book of the priest, vol. 4. Moscow: Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1983, p. 252. Unlike in the early 1980s, when priests were forced to determine topics for confessional conversations often on a whim, pre-revolutionary instructions contained references to this sin precisely because the believers of that time confessed to it. See: Kizenko N. Written Confessions and the Structure of Sacred Narrative/ / Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture / Ed. by Mark Steinberg and Heather Coleman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. pp. 93-118. A similar primness about the same sin was observed in the Church in the West. See: Medieval Handbooks of Penance: a Translation of the Principal libri poenitentiales and Selections from Related Documents/Trans, by John Thomas McNeill and Helena M. Gamer. New York: Octagon Books, 1965. P. 47.

45. Ibid., p. 275.

46. Ibid., p. 280.

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the reason that prompted her to do this, and not hearing a word of remorse from her. In doing so, they cover up unrepentant sin, which is fatal to the soul of the confessor, commit a crime against the pastoral conscience, and introduce temptation among the faithful."47
A particularly critical attitude towards women in the context of confession also first appeared in the Soviet priestly manuals. Perhaps this change in the Soviet era was due to such a phenomenon as the feminization of piety - because of the obvious gender bias among believers. Therefore, the "Handbook" paid special attention to special behavioral flaws that were supposedly exclusively characteristic of women during confession. For example, when describing such a spiritual and psychological state of a believer as charm, the Reference Book noted: "A priest most often has to deal with such painful phenomena when confessing to women who are prone to hysteria, and this should, among other things, serve as a test of the confessor's pastoral patience."48 Some spiritual writers (including those from the clergy) went even further in their references to specifically feminine shortcomings than the official publications of the Russian Orthodox Church. For example, Archpriest Mikhail Ardov notes: "We must immediately admit that in the practice of modern confession, "verbosity" is a relatively rare phenomenon, for the most part, every word has to be extracted from the current believers. (The exception is made up of educated women; these really broadcast "more than the mind and nature") " 49.

These examples-from denouncing profiteering or using public transport as a "hare" to discussing how to treat divorce and abortions allowed in the Soviet state - are clear evidence of changes in the instructions for clergy. These changes themselves, in turn, were a reaction to the realities of Soviet life, which the Church could not ignore. A similar conclusion is drawn by M. V. Korogodina, who believes that the changes that took place in the period from the XIV to the XVII centuries in Russian penitential practices are very important for the Russian Orthodox Church.-

47. Ibid.

48. Desktop book of the priest, vol. 4. Moscow: Publishing House of the Moscow Patriarchate, 1983, p. 270.

Ardov M., Archpriest. 49. Decree, Op. p. 95.

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kakhs were directly related to the socio-political development of the Muscovite Tsardom50. Those who are more politically engaged might expect more direct references to the realities of Soviet life in the "reference books". On the other hand, it is precisely the caution and limited nature of the publication's recommendations for pastors that gives them credibility: it is easy to imagine that confessions of this kind actually took place in the post-war and pre-perestroika period.

Conclusion

The study of the sacrament of confession in the USSR is complicated by some assumptions. The overwhelming majority of believers, for several reasons (official anti-church and anti-religious policies, the closure of churches, and a reduction in the number of priests), found themselves faced with the fact that the only possible form of repentance for their sins was precisely general confession. Individual confession to a priest, with all its customary and well-established rituals, traditions and everyday life, has become a thing of the past along with the pre-revolutionary era itself. At the same time, individual priests have made confession a central point in the spiritual life of their flock. Therefore, in the Soviet era, a kind of confessional family was formed around charismatic confessors from their spiritual children. Such associations, led by a leader who enjoyed unquestionable authority, resembled the Old Believer worlds of the second half of the XVII-beginning of the XVIII centuries. By the end of the 1970s, in Moscow and Leningrad, such families had already formed entire communities that united mainly representatives of the intelligentsia. As a result, confession itself has been transformed from a routine liturgical practice into a kind of testimony of faith. Since women clearly predominated among the faithful in Soviet times, this led to the fact that both ideas about church piety and confession as a key moment in church life acquired a shade of specifically feminine perception.

These changes in church life during the Soviet era should also be evaluated in a broader context. If before the revolution, the average believer visited the is-

Korogodina M. V. 50. Confessions in Russia in the XIV-XIX centuries: Research and texts. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin Publ., 2006, pp. 322-332.

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If it is conducted-often superficially and even formally - only once a year, then under the Soviet regime a deeper religious feeling was introduced into this sacrament. On the other hand, it can be argued that the general confession brought the formal morning confession to a logical point. If we take into account the rarity of confession among other Orthodox peoples - the Greeks or Bulgarians-and the changes that have taken place in the approaches to the sacrament of confession among Catholics since the Second Vatican Council, then we can argue that the general confession of the Soviet era brought the practice of Russian Orthodox Christians closer to other Christian traditions. But the rapid resurgence of individual confession in the former Soviet republics after 1991 suggests that the post-1917 changes in the life of the Church and the faithful have become something of an experiment with different types of confession. While Catholics (especially after the Second Vatican Council) and even Orthodox Christians in Europe, the United States, and the Christian East took the path of modernizing various aspects of church practice, Orthodox Christians in post-Soviet countries began to act in the opposite way. They turned to the pre-revolutionary Church as a standard, which they began to restore strenuously after decades of persecution and almost underground existence. And among the old customs that were brought back to life in the 1990s were, among other things, the direct relationship and sequence of individual confession and communion.

Finally, it should not be simplistic to assume that the practice of confession in Soviet times has changed for the " worse." Interestingly, even in the early Church, penitential practices changed markedly due to the decline in discipline in the communities of believers. As a result, by the sixth century, penance had changed from a mostly public act to a mostly individual act, and, in addition, from a once - in-a-lifetime event to an annual tradition. "Yesterday's pagan barbarians, who became the 'new Romans', were simply unable to follow the old church discipline, which was considered extremely strict even by the 'old Romans', who had much longer experience in the church, "John Mcnail and Helena Gamer say. - When the public offering of repentance began to rapidly disappear, go out of church use, a new confessional system began to take its place just as quickly - a more functional one.-

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It is more appropriate for this still developing society and more in line with its needs and level of development."51. If we take these changes in the early Medieval Church as something natural and self-evident in the context of persecution, then why should we evaluate differently the transformations that took place in the past century in Russia and Ukraine during a period of similar repressions? At the same time, it is surprising that some of the changes in the Russian Church are similar to those in non-repressive (albeit offensive secularist) regimes. Even before the revolution, some members of the clergy spoke of a crisis of confession. In emigration, that is, in realities that were fundamentally different from the Soviet ones, some Russian priests urged not to coincide confession with communion.52
But, in the end, I would like to conclude the article with the following consideration: if we compare the real range of changes that occurred with the sacrament of confession in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1960s and 1990s, it will be incomparably smaller than that of Orthodox Christians in America or Catholics. So the most interesting fact is not that there were any changes in the Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet regime, but that these changes were surprisingly insignificant.

Bibliography

Archive materials

Bakhmetevsky Archive of Russian and Eastern European History and Culture at Columbia University in New York.

Bishop Leonty (Filipovich) Foundation. "Political control over the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union "(manuscript).

State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).

F. 564 (Dissenting opinion of Senator Tagantsev).

F. 5263 (Kuibyshev region).

F. 6991 (Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church).

F. 6991 (Grigory (Chukov), Metropolitan. Selected Words, Speeches, and Articles, L., 1954 [typescript]).

National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (NART).

51. Medieval Handbooks of Penance. P. 22.

Schmemann, prot. Alexander. 52. The Eucharist: The mystery of the Kingdom. Paris, 1984. See also: http://www.schmemann.org/byhim/confessionandcommunion.html.

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Interview

Memoirs of Maria Silvestrovna Plyshevskaya (recorded March 15-18, 1993) and Marfa Samoilovna Shekhova (recorded April 1987).

Memoirs of Boris Petrovich Okopny (recorded on February 16, 2010).

Memoirs of Tamara Ivanovna Plyshevskaya (recorded on February 15, 2010)

Memoirs of Archpriest Boris Ivanovich Kitsenko (recorded on February 15, 2010).

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Memoirs of Yevgenia Nikolaevna Kuzovenkova (recorded in St. Petersburg in January 1992).

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