In scientific articles, blogs and the media there is often an expression attributed to the Soviet leader. These words illustrate stories about the persecution of the church in the 1950s and 1960s. We checked whether Khrushchev really made such a statement.

A phrase attributed to Khrushchev Can meet on pages Media, in numerous scientific publications And lecturesTrue, the authors are not entirely sure when exactly Khrushchev said it: in different texts they are called 1958, 1959, 1961 and other years. There is no agreement about when it was planned to show “the last priest” - there are options “in 1965", "in 1975", "in 1980" or simply "in a few years"

The time that Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev spent as First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee is usually called the Thaw. Following the condemnation of repression and Stalin's cult of personality, the victims of the Great Terror were rehabilitated and censorship was weakened, and the Soviet Union, more than ever before, opened up to the Western world. However, liberalization did not affect all spheres of life - in particular, for religion during this period, on the contrary, the time came for another persecution. In 1954, the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution “On major shortcomings in scientific-atheistic propaganda and measures to improve it”, and a few years later a large-scale anti-religious campaign began.

Many sources claim, that Khrushchev made a promise to show the last priest on TV at the 21st Congress of the CPSU. This was an extraordinary congress, which was convened in order to consider and approve a seven-year plan for the development of the national economy. It took place from January 27 to February 5, 1959 in the meeting room of the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. A verbatim report of the congress in two volumes was published the same year and is available online. However, neither in first volume (it includes transcripts of the first ten meetings), neither second (transcripts from the 11th to 17th meetings, as well as resolutions, resolutions and appendices) “Checked” did not find not only the phrase about the priest attributed to Khrushchev, but also any discussion of the position of the church at all. The word “pop” is mentioned only in the speech of Alexander Tvardovsky, who criticized Soviet writers: “But as soon as we step onto the podium of our writers’ meetings and congresses, we switch to another language, just as the priests (let my brothers forgive me for this comparison) at home and in general in life speak ordinary Russian, and from the pulpit - another language, Church Slavonic, which is obligatory for everyday service.”

Issues of religion were discussed at the next, XXII Party Congress, held in 1961. Then the third was adopted CPSU program, which, among other things, stated: “It is necessary to systematically conduct broad scientific and atheistic propaganda, patiently explain the inconsistency of religious beliefs that arose in the past on the basis of people being oppressed by the elemental forces of nature and social oppression, due to ignorance of the true causes of natural and social phenomena. At the same time, one should rely on the achievements of modern science, which more and more fully reveals the picture of the world, increases man’s power over nature and leaves no room for fantastic inventions of religion about supernatural forces.” During the discussion of the program at the congress, they spoke about the need to be stricter with religious prejudices, about the fact that the revival of religious beliefs and the celebration of religious holidays should not be allowed. However, even at the XXII Congress the phrase about the last priest was not heard - not in speeches Khrushchev, nor in the speeches of other speakers (the verbatim report of this congress is also available online).

IN memories Khrushchev's translator Viktor Sukhodrev mentioned, that the Secretary General spoke about his attitude to religion during an almost four-hour interview with American journalist William Hearst in 1957. In the archives of the Open Society Foundation stored transcript of this interview, however, even there “Checked” did not find any mention of the last priest.

Of course, it is impossible to verify absolutely all of Nikita Khrushchev’s statements - there is no archive where all his speeches, articles and letters would be collected. In the article "Reply to my reader”, published in the newspaper “Soviet Culture” in 1988, the poet Andrei Voznesensky wrote about him: “In that era of flattery and antiglasnosti, half of his words did not get into the newspapers, just as they did not get into the newspaper... his monologues against artists and writers: “Get out of the country!” Only the cordial nature of the meetings was reported.” However, it can be assumed that a vivid figurative statement, allegedly made during a public speech, would still somehow find at least some reflection, if not in the press, then in diaries, memoirs or other sources of that time (as was the case with the story of how Khrushchev promised to show the Americans Kuzka's mother). However, “Verified” did not find a single expression about the last priest in the archive of Soviet newspapers and magazines available in digitized funds Libraries named after Nekrasova, nor in the archives of major Western newspapers. And in the corpus of diaries and memoirs published by the “Lived” project, only one diary mention of a quote about the last priest was found, dating back to the 1960s. But its author, co-founder of the All-Russian Society for the Protection of Historical and Cultural Monuments, Vladimir Desyatnikov, did not clarifieswhen and under what circumstances he heard this expression. Desyatnikov writes: “According to Khrushchev, the coming communism is possible only in an atheistic country. “The current generation of Soviet people will live under communism,” he tirelessly proclaims and at the same time adds: “You’ll see, I’ll show you the last priest on television.” Otherwise, until the 1990s, the phrase “last priest” is found only as an excerpt from the quatrain “We will amuse good citizens / And at the pillar of shame / With the guts of the last priest / We will strangle the last king,” which for a long time was attributed Pushkin and which was often quoted in anti-religious publications of the 1920s and 1930s.

Apparently, Khrushchev’s so-called promise came into scientific circulation thanks to the works of a church historian Mikhail Shkarovsky. In work "The Russian Orthodox Church under Stalin and Khrushchev: state-church relations in the USSR in 1939–1964”, published in 1999, says: “N. Khrushchev’s infamous “famous” promise to show “the last Soviet priest” on television as a museum rarity is known.” As a source of this information, the author refers to his own text from 1995 - “Anti-Church Persecution in the Leningrad Diocese: 1958–1964.” Unfortunately, “Verified” was unable to find a copy of this text, but in another article by Shkarovsky on the same topic (“Anti-religious persecutions of 1958–1964 in the Leningrad diocese and Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov)’s opposition to them") simply repeats the same phrase - without any additional context or clarification. I could not find any earlier references to the “Verified” quote attributed to Khrushchev, with the exception of the already mentioned excerpt from the diary of Vladimir Desyatnikov.

In 2001, the phrase about the last Soviet priest appeared in an article by priest and journalist Vladimir Vigilyansky in the magazine “New world”, and after that, in principle, any publication about the USSR state policy regarding religion in the 1960s rarely goes without it.

Thus, there is not a single convincing evidence that Khrushchev really promised to show the last priest on TV. Different publishers indicate different dates and circumstances for the pronouncement of this promise. The quote only began to be widely used in the 1990s.

The idea for this text arose while “Verified” was working on fact-checking Ksenia Luchenko’s book “At the doors of hell", due out in 2025 with support from the StraightForward Foundation's publishing program.

Cover photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild via Wikimedia Commons