Experience of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Pleading during the Civil War (On the History of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Eastern Regions of Kuban inthe Early 20th Century)

The article considers one of the aspects of the activity of the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kuban during the Civil war. “Pleading” was a type of Church charity, expressed in the intercession of Church hierarchs and representatives of other ranks of the clergy for the disgraced and convicted people. At the beginning of the 20th century, during the period of civil conflict, many representatives of the clergy were involved in political processes, acting “under the banner” of one of the parties to the conflict. At the same time, some priests, abstracting themselves from a certain political force and following their pastoral duty, tried to intercede for their Red Army parishioners before the command of the Volunteer Army. When studying the topic of “pleading” in the East of Kuban, used were the documents from the funds of the State Archive of the Ryazan region and the funds of the Archive of the Ekaterinodar Diocesan Administration. The studied materials allow us not only to get new information about the history of the Civil war in this region, but also to characterize individual clergy for their participation in the social and social life of their parishioners. In fact, many of them became Confessors, and their names are worthy of consideration in the context of the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in general and the history of the Civil war in particular.