The drama of pastoral ministry in the early USSR. Experience of microhistory

The article, based on the “evidential paradigm” of K. Ginzburg, reconstructs the case of persecution of the Protestant pastor of proletarian origin, R.G. Raudmund, from the Leningrad region. The subject of the research is an individual case, which is considered on basis of the “traces and evidence” discovered by the author while working with the archival fund of the lawyer of German origin, M.K. Stackelberg, in OR RNL. The article deals with the court procedure stages of “the case of Pastor R.G. Raudmund”, reveals the peculiarities of his life and the main claims of the Soviet government against him. The paper focuses on the moral foundations of pastoral ministry as a phenomenon and shows the dramatic outcome of the pastoral work. This case has become recurrent in the late 20s – mid 30s of the 20th century in the conditions of the mass religious persecution in the USSR. These facts make it possible to contradict K. Ginzburg and recognize the value and potential of microhistory not only from the point of view of something “individual and unique”, but also due to much-recurring repetition, regularity and multiplicity. However, within the framework of this incident, the individual status in the general flow of religious persecution in the early USSR did exist: the one who became subjected to the repressions was the pastor of the most proletarian origin with great sympathy for the October Revolution of 1917 and the Soviet regime, but who refused to renounce his ministry, which is an important aspect of the Church life.

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