The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

In Russian historiography, the main problems of the anti-church campaign of 1958–1964 have been identified and generally studied. However, the response of the Russian Church Abroad to the unfolding persecution has remained largely understudied to this day. Important evidence of the reaction of the Russian church abroad to the unfolding anti-church campaign is contained in the journal “Bulletin of the Russian Student Christian Movement” published in Paris, edited by the publisher and publicist N. A. Struve. Coverage of various aspects of Khrushchev’s persecution of religion and the church — from clarifying the causes and main directions to their results and consequences — occupied one of the leading places on the pages of the magazine in the first half of the 1960s. Some delay in addressing this topic, which had become relevant since the late 1950s, can be explained by the fact that the editors needed some time to obtain relevant information and draw a conclusion on its basis about the beginning of an essentially new stage in the religious policy of the Soviet state. Information materials and analytical articles devoted to the anti-church campaign of 1958–1964 and published in the first half of the 1960s in the “Bulletin of the RSHD” played an important role not only in bringing to the public’s attention what was happening in the USSR during this period “on the religious front”, but also in mobilizing public opinion in the Russian diaspora and the Western world on this issue with the aim of influencing the Soviet leadership to soften its religious policy. From the end of the 1960s, the topic of Khrushchev’s persecution of the Church was episodically present only in some publications of the journal dedicated to the situation of religion and believers in the Soviet Union.