This article studies the famine of 1921–1922 and 1932–1933 in the Southern Russian regions. Famine as a socio-historical phenomenon is considered in the context of the relationship of state power, the Cossacks, and the Church. The authors reveal the general and special features of the famine emergence and analyze the differences in the state policies of 1921–1922 and 1932–1933. Considerable attention is paid to the survival strategies of the Don, Kuban and Terek populations. Slaughtering and eating draft animals, transfer from the state places of work to the private campaigns and cooperatives, moving to shores and banks, and eating river and sea food became widespread methods of overcoming famine. Asocial survival strategies included cannibalism, abuse of powers, bribery, and more. In 1921–1922, the Russian Orthodox Church fought actively against the famine. In 1932–1933, the Church was weakened and could not provide significant assistance to the starving population. The article was written based on declassified documents from the state and departmental archives, including criminal investigations and analytical materials of the Obedinjonnoe gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie [Joint State Political Directorate] (OGPU) recording the attitudes of minds. Also used are personal stories—namely, interviews with eyewitnesses of the famine of 1932–1933, recorded by the Kuban folklorists in the territory of the Krasnodar and Stavropol Krai.

No abstract

Based on the analysis of a set of clerical records from the fund of the Plenipotentiary Board for Religious Cults at the Rostov Oblast Council of People’s Commissars, this article analyzes the state of the Old Believers’ religious organizations on the territory of Rostov Oblast in the period from 1944 to 1960. During the years of fascist occupation, the Old Believers’ communities, as well as other religious organizations in Rostov Oblast and in the USSR, began opening churches and meetinghouses. From the various Old Believers’ confessions which ceased to exist in the Don region in the 1930s, only the Old Believers of the Belaya Krinitsa confession and the Bespopovtsy recommenced their divine service. After the Board for Religious Cults had been established in Rostov Oblast, there were registered 4 churches and meetinghouses of the Belaya Krinitsa confession believers and 2 meetinghouses of the Bespopovtsy. Due to the establishment of the Donetsk-Don and Caucasus Eparchy, the churches of the Belaya Krinitsa confession became subordinated to the eparchial power and got their priesthood with no obstructions. During the war and in the post-war period, priests of both the Old Believers accepting the hierarchy and the Bespopovtsy had their origins in the Old Be-lievers’ community but did not have any special seminary education. Unlike the Belaya Krinitsa confession, some Bespopovtsian communities with small groups of parishioners became exclusively established round individual canon setters. After they died, their churches became dissociated and lost registration. The confession institutionalization for the Belaya Krinitsa hierarchy became the governing factor for the development of this specific Old Believers’ movement and for gradual decay of various Bespopovtsian confessions which had been widely spread in the Don region in the pre-revolutionary period.

The study is devoted to the missionary movement of the second half of the 19th century. in the Russian Empire and its formation in the Don Army Region. Based on the study of a complex of sources, it is shown that until 1868 the mission was carried out mainly in relation to the “foreigners” of the Volga region and Siberia. Since 1870, the Council of the Missionary Society was moved to Moscow, the charter of the society was approved, according to which the mission was to develop mainly as an internal one. After the opening of the Missionary Society in Moscow, its committees began to open in various dioceses of the Orthodox Russian Church. One of the first committees was opened in the Don and Novocherkassk diocese. Its activities were regulated by the Archbishop of the Don and Novocherkassk Platon (Gorodetsky), who proposed a fundamental approach to conducting a mission in the Don region. On the initiative of the hierarch, two directions of the mission were determined - among the Old Believers and among the Don Kalmyks. The first stage of the mission, initiated by the bishop, was the training of missionaries at the Don Theological Seminary, for which an intensive study of the “schism” and the Kalmyk language was introduced into the curriculum. The second stage was connected with the study of the history of the Old Believers on the Don and the culture and religion of the Kalmyks. The platform for the publication of research, which became a kind of platform for missionary activity, was the journal “Don Diocesan Gazette”, published by the Don Theological Seminary throughout its existence.