ST. ISAAC’S CATHEDRAL IN THE DECISIONS OF THE SOVIET POWER IN 1927-1928 (PART 1)

The participation of the Soviet authorities and representatives of the party and state elite in the first post-revolutionary decade in the fate of church architectural monuments as a heritage that was dissonant in the new ideological context still remains poorly studied in contemporary research. This article is the first in historiography to attempt to reconstruct in as much detail as possible the process of making a decision taken in 1927- 1928 by the capital and local Soviet authorities to terminate the agreement with the church community for the use of St. Isaac’s Cathedral in Leningrad and transfer the building to the People’s Commissariat of Education to establish a museum. The usage of unpublished documents from Saint Petersburg and Moscow archives made it possible to identify the causes and course of the case, as well as the personalities of its central participants, representing the Leningrad Executive Committee, the People’s Commissariat of Education, and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR.