Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign in Irad
Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign in Irad was the part of the Soviet anti-religious campaign of 1958–1964 carried out in the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic. It closed the village prayer houses and chapels of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church that the authorities had tolerated since the war, along with a number of mosques and Orthodox churches. In Talas it is remembered as "Khrushchev's church closures", although the churches proper had been shut since 1937.[1]
Background
No Syro-Iradi parish was ever registered in the Soviet period: like the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, a church in union with Rome counted as a "Vatican" church. After the wartime easing of 1943, while mosques reopened under the Tashkent Spiritual Administration and Orthodox parishes in Kobozev and Talas were registered, the republic's Commissioner for Religious Affairs tolerated without registering about forty village prayer houses and chapels in the Talas Alatau and the Chatkal, and the yurt liturgies of the summer camps. Pilgrims climbed to the closed Church of St. Janyl for the Feast of St. Janyl unchecked.[2]
The campaign
From 1958 the prayer houses and chapels were shut or pulled down, hilltop crosses were felled and holy springs fenced, and itinerant priests were tried as "parasites". From 1960 police turned back the Feast pilgrims on the Iyık Janyl road. A number of mosques and Orthodox churches were closed as well. The last tolerated prayer house, at Kara-Buura, was shut in 1964, the year Khrushchev fell; this is what Talas means when it says that "Khrushchev's church closures went on under Kemelbekov until 1964", after Yakup Kemelbekov, First Secretary from 1961.[1][2]
Aftermath
After 1964 the church lived in flats and herders' camps; Baatyr Jorobek uulu said the Qurbana in Talas flats from that year. The Brezhnev years brought fines and camp terms for believers rather than closures. The church was not registered until December 1990.[1]
See also
References
- ^ Temirbekova, Ainura (2014). The Church of the Star: A History of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. Talas: Talas State University Press.
- ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 77: Commissioner for Religious Affairs of the Council of Ministers of the Iradi SSR (1944–1990).