The article discusses the state-confessional policy in Omsk region in the 1950–60s on the example of reports of the plenipotentiary of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR in Omsk Region. The source base was the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation – the P-6991 fund, inventory 3 “The Council for Religious Cults under the Council of Ministers of the USSR. 1944–1960”, which examined the reports of the plenipotentiary of the Council for Religious Cults under the Regional Committee of the CPSU for Omsk Region, as well as documents from the funds of the State Historical Archive of Omsk Region, which provide comparative data on actual religious communities and groups in Omsk Region for the 1950–1960s. Attention is paid to religious identity, methods for its identification by the Soviet official and local authorities. The problems of ethnocultural identity of the Mennonite Germans of Omsk Region are examined: the issues of creating autonomy and mass relocations to the Kazakh SSR in the late 1960s. It raises questions of Soviet identity and religiosity, as well as the problem of violations of the constitutional rights of believing Soviet citizens, in particular Article 124 of the Constitution. Particular attention is paid to issues of religious and anti-religious propaganda during the “Khrushchev persecution” of the church and marking the religious worldview as marginal.
Keywords: Mennonites, Omsk Region, state-confessional relations, religious identity
DOI: 10.22250/2072-8662.2020.4.49-58
About the author
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Natalia V. Vorobeva – DSc (History), Associate Professor, Vice-Rector for Research, Head of the Department of Church History Disciplines; |