On Times and Fates: Reflections on S. A. Chebotarev’s Book “Restless People: Essays on the History of Church-State Relations and Religious Life in the 1940s–1980s. Book One” (Tambov: Tambov Publishing House, 2024. 448 pp.)

The article is devoted to the examination of the monograph by S. A. Chebotarev, dedicated to the post-war history of state-church relations and religious life in the Tambov diocese. The author analyzes the methodological approaches of S. A. Chebotarev, who sought to show both the causes and consequences of the “new course” of the Soviet government in relation to religion and the Church using the example of an “ordinary diocese” of the Russian Orthodox Church. The article particularly notes how S. A. Chebotarev investigated the life and work of the Tambov commissioners of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church (since 1965 – the Council for Religious Affairs), who were not so much state “curators” of the Church, obliged to monitor the implementation of legislation by religious figures, as “ideological overseers” who restrained the development of church life. The article examines how S. A. Chebotarev analyzes the activities of Archbishop Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky) and his successors in the Tambov diocese, creating vivid socio-psychological portraits of Orthodox bishops of the Soviet era, as well as “ordinary” believers who strove to defend their right to believe in God and preserve Orthodox traditions in the difficult environment of militant atheism and official Soviet atheism.