Roman Catholic communities of Dnipropetrovsk in the second half of the 1940s

Abstract

In the first post-war years, two Roman Catholic communities operated in the Dnipropetrovsk region – in Dnipropetrovsk and Dniprodzerzhinsk. Despite a certain liberalization of relations between the state and religious organizations, the communities felt pressure from the authorities, which hindered their normal activities and used the following methods for this: financial pressure, bureaucratic red tape in registration, making it impossible for priests to arrive, without which the parishes could not fully exist.

The communities were under the supervision of the authorities, the commissioner of the Council for Religious Cults under the Council of Ministers of the USSR in the Dnipropetrovsk region, who was directly involved in this, received additional instructions from the leadership to prevent the activities of the communities. Every year, the pressure from the state increased.

The analysis of documents that are available, but do not provide complete information, showed that the Roman Catholic communities of Dnipropetrovsk and Dniprodzerzhynsk were similar in many respects: they had the same (or almost the same) number, the vast majority of parishioners of both communities belonged to the Polish national minority, communities consisted of middle-aged and older people, whose consciousness was shaped by a good Catholic upbringing even in pre-Soviet times.

A significant part of the parishioners, in particular those who were not afraid to indicate their data and sign the documents, were not working at that time and belonged to the groups of pensioners, disabled people, housewives; among the believers there were also workers and employees.

The Roman Catholic community of Dnipropetrovsk did not have time to quickly register and obtain the right to use the religious building before the pressure from the state authorities intensified.

The authorities managed to force the parishioners of St. Joseph’s Church to give up their claims to the religious building (the Dniprodzerzhinsk community met in a private room), which was located in the center of the city and claimed by state organizations of Dnipropetrovsk.