Stalin: A Biography

Still more important were Stalin’s decisions on the Russian Orthodox Church. By 1939 there were only around a hundred places of worship still open to believers.¹⁰ No monastery had survived the Soviet years. Tens of thousands of priests had been slaughtered in the Civil War, the First Five-Year Plan and the Great Terror. People nevertheless believed in God. When the USSR census took place in 1937, some 55 per cent of the population rejected the aspirations of the atheistic state and declared themselves religious believers — and naturally the true proportion of the faithful must have been much greater.

Stalin, former pupil of the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary, welcomed Acting Patriarch Sergei’s patriotic stance. He was also pleased by the offertories collected in churches for the production of armaments. The Dmitri Donskoi tank column came from this source. It suited Stalin nicely that the Russian Orthodox Church was stiffening the military commitment of its congregations. Buildings were quietly allowed to be reopened for religious purposes. Stalin formalised the position by inviting Acting Patriarch Sergei to a meeting with him in the Kremlin on 4 September 1943. Sergei arrived, wondering what exactly awaited him.¹¹ Stalin acted as if no contretemps had ever taken place between the Soviet state and the Russian Orthodox Church. Jovially he enquired of Sergei why he had come with so few priests. Sergei overcame the temptation to say that he could easily have mustered more clergy if Stalin had not spent the previous decade arresting and executing them. Yet the atmosphere was lightened by Stalin’s proposal that in return for the termination of persecution and for a measure of freedom to hold services of worship the Church should acknowledge the legitimacy of the Soviet state and avoid criticism of its internal and external policies.¹²

The timing of this concession was never explained by Stalin; he did not even allow Pravda to make a public announcement. Yet it was a concordat in all but name. This has led to speculation that foreign policy might have been the motivating factor. Stalin was about to meet Roosevelt and Churchill at the Tehran Conference. It has been suggested that a demonstrable diminution of anti-religious persecution was thought likely to enable him to squeeze a better deal out of the Western Allies.¹³

This would be more plausible if he had simultaneously lessened the pressure on the other Christian denominations, especially those with organisations in the West. But Stalin openly privileged the Russian Orthodox Church. The explanation is probably connected to his calculations about rule in the USSR. The meeting with the Acting Patriarch occurred shortly after the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. The Red Army was about to start offensives to retake the western borderlands. Hitler had permitted Christian denominations, including the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, to function under German occupation. Religious freedom, having been tasted again, would be hard to suppress quickly. While restoring limited autonomy to the Russian Orthodox Church, Stalin enabled it to resume charge of buildings which had not belonged to it since the 1920s. As the Soviet armed forces fought their way into Ukraine and Belorussia, churches were transferred into the possession of the Russian Orthodox Church. Evidently Stalin judged that Christian believers would be more easily controlled if Sergei, who was elected Patriarch at the Synod held in September 1943, was presiding over them. Stalin left nothing to chance. He appointed G. Karpov to the Governmental Council on the Russian Orthodox Church to oversee relations with it. Stalin wanted his pound of flesh.

Another change in policy occurred in the international communist movement. Stalin reverted to his inclination in early 1941 to abolish the Comintern. Turning to Dimitrov, he instructed him to organise the necessary formalities. At meetings of the Comintern Executive Committee in May 1943 the foreign communist leaders meekly agreed to Stalin’s demands.¹⁴ He claimed to have concluded that it had been mistaken to try — as Lenin had done — to run the world communist movement from a single centre. He himself had repeated the error, and the result had been that communist parties had been accused by their enemies of being directed by the Kremlin. Stalin wanted them to be able to appeal to their respective parties without this albatross round their necks.¹⁵