Items
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Letter about a secret Roman Catholic home christening Budapest
This word-for-word transcript of a typewritten personal letter tells about a secret home christening held in Budapest in December 1954. Amongst other deeply personal matters, the author, the child’s grandmother, briefly reports about the baptism. From this we learn that the child was baptised by a Piarist monk in the presence of the extended family, altogether 22 people. For the occasion the child’s grandfather erected a makeshift altar. As the letter-writer notes, he "made a beautiful altar. He made it so exceptionally nice that everybody was weeping with emotion. My entire home looked like a -
Inochentist postcard-icons Transnistria
The images show postcards and mass produced photographs confiscated from a group of arrested Inochentists in February 1942 in the village of Cuibușor, in Romanian-occupied Transnistria. Image 1 and 2 show the front and reverse of a postcard. On the front, the monk Inochentie (1875-1917) is shown in a scene from his vernacular hagiography in which he is under arrest, surrounded by Tsarist soldiers after his attempted to escape from exile on Solovetsky island. The reverse of the postcard, comprises short quotes and adaptations from the New Testament. Here text and image were configured in a rel -
Confiscated manuscript of Pentecostal prophecy Ukraine
This is a manuscript with a Pentecostal prophesy confiscated in 1953 from an arrested Ukrainian woman, who was known as a Pentecostal prophetess. The prophecy is handwritten in a notebook and is 15-page long. It narrates the coming death of Ashur, who will be overthrown from his throne by God and will be shot dead. After his death, all the prisoners will be released and people will live in freedom. The prophecy also stresses a special religious role of Ukraine and Kiev, its capital, that will become a place of great spiritual awakening. The item comes from the 1953 MGB penal case against f -
Truman press-cutting from a Pentecostal criminal case Ukraine
This press-cutting with an image of the American President Harry S. Truman was confiscated from an arrested Pentecostal woman in February 1953 in Ukraine. The first image shows Truman receiving an international delegation of journalists. The picture has a title in Russian, “In one of the halls of the White house, the president of the US receives American and international journalists almost every week”. The press-cutting was taken from an unknown, presumably Russian diaspora journal printed in the USA. The item comes from a 1953 MGB penal case against four Pentecostal believers, all Ukraini -
Photo-collage and network scheme True Orthodox believers Russia
This photo-collage and scheme of a religious network were produced as part of an exemplary collective penal case against members of the catacomb True-Orthodox Church. The photo-collage shows a group of believers put on trial - thirty eight True Orthodox believers headed by Alexii Bui, bishop of the Voronezh diocese (top row, fourth from the left). The network scheme represents the movement as a centralised organisation, uniting religious centres in Leningrad and Moscow with numerous "cells" (as the OGPU called them) in southern regions of Russia (Voronezh, Belgorod, Kursk, etc). It shows repre -
Secret police instructional publication on Russian Orthodox clandestine groups
The images are a photo-collage and scheme of a “liquidated” religious network produced as part of a closing indictment in a collective penal case against one hundred believers, followers of underground popular Orthodox movements, referred to as the Samosviatsy and the Ioannits. The group on trial were monks and nuns from closed Orthodox monasteries and ordinary believers from the Ukrainian and Russian countryside. They rejected both Soviet power and the Russian Orthodox Church authority as they believed the Orthodox Church was compromised by collaboration with the Bolsheviks. The network, whic -
Defaced portraits of Soviet leaders Moldova
These mass produced postcard-sized portraits of three soviet leaders, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria and Anastas Mikoyan, have been torn and inserted into an envelope as evidence in a secret police personal file referring to a collective penal case. They were found during the search of a house of an Inochentist leader on February 11th 1953, a few weeks before Stalin’s death. From the perspective of secret police, the disrespectful attitude towards the abovementioned leaders of those who had torn these pictures equated to an anti-Soviet act. The origin of the defaced images is open to a n -
Crime scene photographs of a raid of a hidden house church Budapest
These pictures have been selected from the 27 crime scene photographs that were taken during a raid of pastor József Németh's community in a hidden house church created. The raid took place on September 26th, 1972 during a regular Tuesday gathering. The first photograph depicts the hidden house church in József Németh’s house in Pesterzsébet. On the picture we see nine congregants some of whom are facing the occasional table-alter, discussing the unfolding situation, others are turning towards the back of the room in order to follow events. Behind the alter, the double doors are covered with -
Confiscated photographs of Archangelist women Moldova
This page from an MGB investigation file from 1947 from Soviet Moldavia shows three images of women preachers from the Archangelist movement, a branch of Inochentism. The first image portrays the women holding crosses in their right hand, facing the camera and cut off at waist height. The composition and symbolism of this image reproduce the visual language of icons. Images of this kind could offend the sensibilities of Orthodox believers. The two lower images carry the same imagery but in a less obvious way. The women are dressed conservatively in dark clothes that are inspired by monastic dr -
Evidence of illegal activity of underground Catholic religious order Hungary
This picture depicts a Continental typewriter confiscated during a house search of a Hungarian Cistercian monk, Dr. Ferenc Piusz Halász (1909-1994) in 1961. The typewriter was photographed along with illegally held US dollars. Three photo images were taken by the secret agents in order to show how the US dollars were hidden in an envelope inside the typewriter. On the reverse of the photograph we find the following text: "Elismerem, hogy a fotokópia hátoldalán látható dollár az én tulajdonomat képezte, illetve azonos azzal a négyszázkilencvenhét dollárral, melyet a fotokópia hátoldalán látha -
Destruction of Romanian Old Calendarist Church in Cucova
These photographs were taken in 1935, in the village of Cucova, in the county of Putna (nowadays Bacău), as evidence of the rebellions and problems caused by the Old Calendarists in the region. The term "Stilists" was also used by the state and the press in order to label them, referring to the fact that they were following the "old style" dates and calendar. The first image depicts some gendarmes, a few members of civil authorities and mainly women members of the Old Calendarist community, all of whom were arrested. The photograph was taken in front of the Old Calendarist wooden church, wh -
Confiscated photograph of Old Calendarist nuns Romania
This photograph was confiscated in 1941 by the Siguranța, the Romanian secret police prior to Communism. It depicts four Old Calendarist nuns, also referred to as Stilists. A short handwritten text on the reverse states that it was taken on September 1st, 1939. The nuns are dressed in standard monastic clothes, their heads are covered and their black tunics entirely cover their bodies. In their hands, they hold “metaniere”, Eastern Orthodox prayer ropes. The “metaniera” is an important part of monastic dress and is used during prayer to aid concentration. The composition of the photograph and -
Archangelist Staged Ritual Moldova
This photograph which was taken by Soviet secret police officers appears to capture a ritual performed by Archangelists (a branch of the Inochentist movement) in one of their underground chapels. On closer inspection, however, it is evident that this is not a surveillance photograph but rather a staged reenactment performed for the camera. The framing, camera angle, lighting and mood of the photograph were all determined by the secret police photographer with the intention of creating a powerful image for use by the regime. Indeed, the two Archangelists, shown wearing ritual clothing and holdi