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Soviet Persecution Suppresses the Russian Orthodox Church

Christianity

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Origin from 1917

Lenin's early 1918 decree stripped the Russian Orthodox Church of legal standing and property, opening seventy years of Soviet persecution. Twenty eight bishops and over 1,200 priests were executed in the first five years alone; roughly 130,000 priests were arrested between 1917 and 1935, some 95,000 of them shot; and the 1937 to 1938 purges alone recorded 168,300 clergy arrested and 106,300 shot. Churches numbering nearly 30,000 in 1927 fell to fewer than 500 by 1940. A wartime respite from 1941 and a further Khrushchev-era campaign from 1959 to 1964 that closed some 12,000 more churches were both part of the same long suppression, which did not meaningfully end until Gorbachev's 1988 celebration of the millennium of Russian Christianity.

Facts
Dates
Start Year
from 1917 1
End Year
to 1988 2
Sourced to the subject's own accountThe reused scholarly source on file, Pospielovsky's 1984 monograph, can only substantiate the campaign through the early 1980s by its own publication date. The 1988 endpoint, Gorbachev's public celebration of the millennium of Russian Christianity and the glasnost-era relaxation around it, is drawn from the second, newer source instead, the two sources' different reach named rather than silently merged.
Status
Suppressed 1
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How Soviet Persecution Suppressed the Russian Orthodox Church

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

In early 1918, Vladimir Lenin's government issued a decree stripping the Russian Orthodox Church of its legal standing and its property, opening seventy years of Soviet persecution. Twenty eight bishops and more than 1,200 priests were executed in the first five years alone.

The scale only grew from there. Roughly 130,000 priests were arrested between 1917 and 1935, some 95,000 of them shot, and the purges of 1937 and 1938 alone recorded 168,300 clergy arrested and 106,300 shot. The number of open churches fell from nearly 30,000 in 1927 to fewer than 500 by 1940.

The persecution eased briefly during the war years from 1941, then resumed under Nikita Khrushchev, whose campaign from 1959 to 1964 closed some 12,000 more churches. Only under Mikhail Gorbachev did the pressure finally lift, and a later account carries the story to his 1988 public celebration of the millennium of Russian Christianity as the point the long suppression ended.

What seventy years of persecution changed for the Russian Orthodox Church's spread was near total institutional destruction followed by survival against long odds. A church that had opened nearly 30,000 buildings in 1927 emerged from Soviet rule with a fraction of that number, its clergy decimated by arrest and execution, yet still standing when the state that had tried to erase it gave way to a new era.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Russian Orthodox Church, Denominations

This source names Russian Orthodox Church directly: "Lenin's early 1918 decree stripped the Russian Orthodox Church of legal standing and property, opening seventy years of Soviet persecution."

Source The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982Dimitry V. Pospielovsky

Corresponds To

Soviet Anti-Religious Campaigns, Religious Events
Source The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982Dimitry V. Pospielovsky

Occurred In

Russia, Countries
Source The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982Dimitry V. Pospielovsky

Spread Event Of

Christianity, Religions

The suppression the tradition's existing "Christianity Revives In Post-Soviet Russia" event, 1991 to 2017, implied but never itself recorded, found on a reversal spot check of Christianity's existing arc and filled here.

Source The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982Dimitry V. Pospielovsky
Sources
1. The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime, 1917-1982
Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984
2. Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026View the Source
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