The archpriest called the Stalinist repressions genocide

Moscow, December 30 – The repressions under Stalin were not only against the bourgeoisie, the White Guards, the peasants and the clergy, this massacre can be considered genocide, the rector of the Tatian Church at Moscow State University, who is one of the well-known church advocates who had previously. The press service of Patriarch Alexy II, and then Patriarch Kirill, was headed by Archpriest Vladimir Vigiliansky in an interview with the News Agency.

“The repressions under Stalin were not only against the enemies of the new government – the landowners, the gentry, the military, the bourgeoisie, the monarchists and the White Guards – but also against the peasantry, the clergy, the intelligentsia, the bureaucracy and dissidents. It can be described as genocide,” he said. He is in an interview on the day of the centenary of the formation of the Soviet Union.

According to him, in Khrushchev’s time, the intelligentsia “did not notice at all” the rising repressions against the clergy.

“On the other hand, hundreds of clergymen were sent to prisons and camps for economic crimes,” Vigilyansky added.

The cleric said that his father and maternal grandfather were oppressed. Vigilyansky’s great-grandfather, after six months of imprisonment in the Cheka, was expelled from Russia.

“I was born in exile. My mother – she was a writer – was blacklisted for a novel not published in the USSR, published abroad in 1978. I was expelled from the Pedagogical Institute for the underground samizdat magazine,” the archpriest added.