“Holy letters”, fear and eschatology in post-war Soviet society

Abstract

The paper dwells upon “holy letters” (special genre of religious folklore), which circulated in Soviet villages, towns and cities in the 1940-1950s. Analysis of reaction to those letters of Soviet control organs allows to reconstruct several fears (with eschatological fear among them) intrinsic to different groups of the post-war Soviet society. In contrast to similar texts of the first half of the 20th century, the fear of the coming apocalypse was combined in the “holy letters” of the post-war years with technological fears (industrial accidents, nuclear war). Two documents are presented to the reader. The first one is a “holy letter” that circulated in the Kotlas district of the Arkhangelsk region; a copy of it was sent to the Council for the Russian Orthodox Church by the agent of the Council for the Arkhangelsk district in a report for the first half of 1954. The second one is a lengthy abstract from a letter cited in data concerning some issues of atheistic propaganda among youth in 1957, provided by the Central Committee of the Komsomol to the Central Committee of the Communist Party.