"ROUGH ADMINISTRATION" AND THE FIGHT AGAINST IT OF THE AUTHORIZED COUNCIL FOR THE AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN THE SMOLENSK REGION IN 1953-1958
The present topic is considered in the context of participation of the authorized Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in certain events that were «legally inappropriate» and caused rejection of believers and parish activists and the reaction of the Council to those events. The author examines the period of transformation of practical implementation of religious policy in the USSR in the post-Stalin period, when prohibitive and restrictive measures were not legally fixed in full yet, but at the same time there was a certain return to the pre-war methods of combating the expansion of religiosity that ran counter to the official position of the Soviet state. The official authorities declared the need to use only ideological methods, which included education, high-quality agitation and persuasion. On the basis of a number of analyzed sources the author came to the conclusion that the commissioner of the Council for the Smolensk Region in the mid-1950s had a sufficiently professional approach to fulfilling his duties of monitoring the implementation of justice not only by religious organizations, but also by the Soviet authorities.