The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

This article attempts a new analysis of the data regarding the time, place, and circumstances of the execution of four persons accused in the 1922 “Petrograd Process” against clergy and laity — the martyrs Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of Petrograd and Gdov, Archimandrite Sergiy (Shein), rector of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius on Fontanka, Professor Yuri Novitsky, and attorney Ivan Kovsharov. The author outlines avenues for further unraveling this secret execution, which may have become one of the first systemic crimes of the Bolshevik party against the Russian Church. All historians’ opinions on this issue are collected and analyzed, and their validity is assessed. The author also notes the introduction into scientific circulation of the first official document recording the official date of the execution. A source study review of documents of the multi-volume file of the St. Petersburg FSB Archive was conducted to determine whether they contain any clues regarding the circumstances of the Petrograd case’s outcome. Analysis of the available data does not rule out the possibility that the documents regarding the execution may still be in secret storage in the departmental archive, and the claim of their absence is likely untrue. Evidence from the Russian émigré newspapers and memoirs suggests that the participants in the trial may have been executed not on the night of August 12th to 13th, but later, and not all together, but individually. They may have been transferred to Moscow, to the internal prison on Lubyanka. The potential of available sources only for this research topic has not been exhausted, and therefore it should be continued without ignoring the circumstances of one of the most vile and bloody crimes of the Bolshevik regime against the Russian Church.