Courrier de la Bibliothèque N° 55 - Septembre 2017

The Armenian Church under the Soviet Regime [ L'Église arménienne sous le régime soviétique ]

de Felix Corley

Les documents sont des tirés à part de la revue Religion, State & Society, Vol. 24, (1996) format 17,5 x 25 cm, numéro 1, pages 9 à 53 « The Armenian Church under the Soviet Regime, Part 1: the Leadership of Kevork », et numéro 4, pages 289 à 343 « The Armenian Church under the Soviet Regime, Part 2: the Leadership of Vazgen ».

Préambule du premier article

Like all religions groups in the Soviet Union, the Armenian Apostolic Church suffered greatly in the 1930s. The low point came in 1938, with the mysterious death — undoubtedly at the hands of the NKVD — of the Church's leader, Catholicos Khoren I (Muradbekyan). As for other groups, the Second World War and the rapprochement with the Soviet state came just at the right time. The Church was saved from oblivion, mainly because of its importance to overseas Armenians. Within Soviet Armenia it was kept on a very tight lash, reduced to just a remnant of its former glory.

This is the first part of an article that will cover the history of the Church from 1938 up to the death of Catholicos Vazgen in 1994. This article is based on published sources and research in the archives of the Council for the Affairs of the Armenian Church in Yerevan, as well as in the Armenian party archives. The files of the Armenian Council available to researchers begin to thin out by the early 1960s, as all files related to the period from the mid-1960s are still in use by the present Council, housed in the old offices on Abovyan Street in Yerevan. I have also examined material in the Central Committee Archive in Moscow and in the extensive files of the Council for Religious Affairs in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The Moscow material also begins to thin out by the 1960s, and for this reason it was in Vilnius that I examined later material from the All-Union Councils.

L'auteur Felix Corley est un observateur de la liberté de conscience et de religion dans les pays de l'Est.

Il a été rédacteur en chef de Forum 18, une initiative chrétienne web et email, et dont le nom fait référence à l'Article 18 de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme.