Archpriest Sergei Andreevich Sakharov. The fate of a priest under conditions of serious persecutions against the Church in the 1930s

Abstract

The article presents the previously unpublished documents about the main stages in the life of Archpriest Sergey Sakharov during the political repressions of the Soviet regime in the 1930s. The purpose of the article is to trace the major milestones in life of a normal average clergyman at the time of repressions carried out by the Soviet government. Having before one’s eyes a detailed picture of the church-state relations in the 20th century, the life of an individual clergyman has often remained outside the field of historical research. At the same time, it is precisely the investigation into the life path of a “typical” rural priest that makes it possible to fully imagine the fate of many of his compatriots who completed their “journey” at the Butovo training ground in 1937. The article provides some brief biographical information about the life of Archpriest Sergei Sakharov until 1930, but the central part of the present paper is focused on the three successive arrests. Reconstructing them on the basis of the previously unpublished documents from the State Archives of the Russian Federation, the author identifies the distinctive features of those processes, depending on the gradual swinging of the repressive pendulum, and makes an attempt to envision the fate of the thousands of affected clergy through the prism of the personality of Archpriest Sergei Andreyevich Sakharov.