A new source for Russian Religious History: the American Catholic Press, 1917-1924
Soviet antireligious policy not only eradicated religious institutions and their press, but also drastically reduced and distorted the corpus of historical documentation. While the state, party, and police did generate a substantial volume of materials against religious organizations and believers, the disestablishment of organized religion meant that much of the information assembled before 1917 was no longer collected. To help fill this void in the source base, it is important to draw upon materials available outside the former Soviet Union. This paper examines the American Catholic press in the first six years of Soviet power - a period when both the Vatican and Soviet authorities engaged in wide-ranging diplomatic discussions. This period was also a watershed for the Catholic press: in 1920 the National Catholic Welfare Council (the central Catholic institution in America) created what came to be called the Catholic News Agency (CNA), which collected information from around the world and provided a key source not only for American diocesan newspapers, but for the secular press in the United States and around the world. CNA gave particular attention to Russia, partly because of the Vatican’s diplomatic activities, partly because of expectations that the Catholic Church could proselytize among a Russian population that, by the Catholic account, remained religious despite Bolshevik antireligious campaigns. The agency’s editors, professional journalists from leading newspapers, assiduously solicited materials from Catholics still in Russia as well as those who had recently emigrated. Significantly, the American Catholic press did not closely adhere to the Vatican «line» and played a critical role in delaying recognition of the USSR until long after most European countries.