Database “For Christ's Afflicted”

The idea of ​​creating a databank of new martyrs and confessors of the 20th century Russians arose in the Brotherhood in the name of the All-Merciful Savior ^[1] . The development of the database and the collection of materials about the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church began in 1990 in the information section of the Brotherhood in the name of the All-Merciful Savior. This work was headed by Doctor of Technical Sciences Nikolai Evgenievich Emelyanov ^[5] . According to Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov : “Before this work of Nikolai Evgenievich, the history of the Russian Church of the 20th century was like a fairy tale. History consisted of traditions. There were many documents, but they were almost not investigated and not systematized, this story had little evidence, because much was destroyed or inaccessible. When this Database appeared, it became possible to put the study of history on a truly scientific basis ” ^[6] . According to Nikolai Emelyanov, starting the work he did not imagine its scale: “No one knew about the scale of the repressions. When we started our work in 1992, we thought that we would find two to three thousand victims, a maximum of five. They decided that everything was lost, no documents were preserved ” ^[7] .

In 1992, the St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Institute (PSTBI) was founded and in the same year Patriarch Alexy II blessed the transfer of the archives of the Synodal Commission for the Rehabilitation of Repressed Clergy and Laity of the Russian Orthodox Church to the PSTB, the activity of which had exhausted itself by then, blessing “focus at the Institute for the Study of the History of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century ” ^{[8] [1]} . The database was developed by the department of recent history of the Russian Orthodox Church ^[9] .

In 1994, the PSTB received a grant for the creation of the “Recent History of the Russian Orthodox Church” information system from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) ^{[10] [11]} , which made it possible to acquire equipment for the task of developing a data bank. Thanks to this, in August 1996, the first web resource was launched with access to database materials.

Work with the database led to the creation of the Department of Informatics at PSTGU, from which in 2008 the Faculty of Informatics and Applied Mathematics grew ^{[9] [12]} .

In 2009, Google Translate was integrated into the service, which made it possible to perform automatic translation into several languages ^[13] . At that time, the list was replenished with about a hundred names every month and about two thousand thousand new names annually ^[14] .

On November 18, 2009, Patriarch Kirill, speaking at a one-year act of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, said: “With special gratitude I would like to note the creation of a computer database of our martyrs and confessors for Christ's victims, including more than 33 thousand biographical references. This abundance of valuable material related to the tragic page of our recent national history attracts more than a thousand hits every day. People turn to this system, wanting to find their loved ones, relatives or simply get acquainted with the unique experience of mass martyrdom and confession, loyalty to Christ and the Church in world history ” ^[15] .

Inclusion Criteria

The database includes repressed Orthodox priests and clergy, their close relatives, if this kinship caused them to be persecuted, members of parish councils, and simply active lay people arrested for group “church” cases ^[16] . According to Nikolai Emelyanov: “When collecting information and filling out the database, we interpret this position as follows: if the accusation says“ church-monarchist ”or“ church counter-revolutionary organization ”, etc., then repressions are legitimately attributed to religious” ^[17] . Information is also taken into account about Orthodox clergy, convicted in purely criminal cases, the fabrication of which was one of the methods of compromising people loyal to the Church ^[1] . The database contains people executed without any trial, which was especially common during the Civil War ^[7] .

The base did not include believers, although repressed, but separated from the Russian Orthodox Church, such as the Renovationists and representatives of the UAOC (“self-sanctity”), as well as Old Believers , Catholics , Protestants and sectarians, etc. ^[16] .

The specificity of the database is a collection of all facts of repression for faith, even in relation to those Orthodox people whose canonization is not relevant ^[1] .

When entering new data into the database, a check is made: is there already a person in the database or is it a new person for whom you need to start a new record. This is one of the most important input phases, eliminating duplication of information. Persons who nevertheless got into the database twice are called “doubles” by the administrators of the base ^[16] . According to Nikolai Emelyanov: “There have been cases when the same person was arrested several times, and during the first arrest he was a priest, and in the second - already a monk with a different name. And you need to reduce these repressions into one biography. For this, an employee of the Department of Informatics, Ph.D. n Somin N.V. has developed a program for detecting “doubles,” when according to the information there seem to be two different people, but in fact the same one ” ^[7] .

Sources of Information

The basis for the database was the materials of investigative files. According to Lydia Golovkova, employee of the Department of Contemporary History of PSTGU: “You are investigating one thing, and twenty more people are mentioned there. We order things for them, and there are another hundred people. Enough for several generations of researchers ” ^[7] .

In 1992, the archives of the Synodal Commission for the Rehabilitation of the Repressed Clergy and Laity of the Russian Orthodox Church were transferred. So, about 2000 letters from relatives of various individuals (approximately 2.5 thousand names) fell into the hands of researchers ^[18] . Upon further verification, most of them turned out to be unreliable and of low value documents ^[19] .

Also used "information gleaned from private correspondence, books, individual memories of acquaintances" ^[18] .

Part of the information was received from relatives of the repressed persons. However, under the data of Nikolai Emelyanov for 2009, the percentage of biographies supplemented in this way was only 3%. This is partly due to the fact that "many Soviet people tried to forget that their relatives were priests" ^[7] .

After the glorification of the new martyrs, icons are written in some dioceses and their biographies are drawn up, however, this is not always reported to PSTU specialists. Therefore, Professor Emelyanov instructed the children participating in the PSTGU Olympiad to collect this information as homework ^[7] .

Display

Each biography in the PSTGU database is presented in the form of a complexly structured description, divided into hundreds of interrelated facts reflected in the details.

Uses an object-oriented DBMS NIKA produced by ISP RAS ^[20] .

By March 2012, it contained more than 34,500 biographical references and 5,600 photographs. In this work, to a considerable extent done by enthusiasts, over 50 people took part in 20 years ^[1] .

• Database “New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church of the 20th Century”