Protestantismul şi puterea în Rusia ţaristă şi URSS
Protestantism and the Power in the Tsarist Russia and in USSR

Interview with Tatiana NIKOLISKAIA

Summary/Abstract: This paper is an interview made by the writer Vasile Ernu with the Russian professor Tatiana Nikoliskaia, author of the book The Russian Protestantism and the State Power, 1905-1991, published at the European University of Sankt-Petersburg Printing House in 2009 [in Russian: Татьяна Никольская, Русский протестантизм и государственная власть в 1905-1991 годах, Санкт-Петербурге, Издательство Европейского Университета, 2009]. The author of the volume is a historian and one of the few researchers on a niche field not so often approached: the relation between the Russian Protestants community, members of a religious minority in the Russian Empire and in the former Soviet Union, and the Power. The interview is based on the structure of the book. First it tries to mark, as does the volume, a historical evolution of this relation between 1905 and the October Revolution in 1917; the agitated period after the radical changes made by the October Revolution until the establishment of the Stalinist regime; the Stalinist period, the period of thawing during Hrushciov administration; the period of stagnation duringBrejnev administration; the Perestroika period and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the post-communist Russia. The interview presents several key elements of each of these periods questioning the relation between the Protestant community and the respective power of the period. A second direction is represented by certain major themes related to this relation (the Russian Protestantism and the Power), like the censorship; the type of the relation with the Tsarist state and the differences among different communist periods; the repressions, the relation of the community with the majority Church; the relation of the Protestant movement with the Western world, the type of organization; the antireligious propaganda used by the Power in different periods; the Protestant community during the World War II; the relation between different Protestant leaders and Soviet dissidents; production and dissemination of the printed materials; the evolution of these communities during post-communist period etc. The interview, even it is not an exhaustive and ample document, aims only to present a book and a research field and to analyze the central elements of the history and the relation between the Russian Protestantism and the Tsarist and Soviet Power over almost 90 years of the terrible 20th century. Hoping that the material will arouse interest we hope that we shall see this book translated in Romanian but also many papers approaching the relation between the Romanian Protestantism and the local Power, which faced similar problems and conflicts.

• Details
• Contents