"On the shaky border between Orthodoxy and religious archaism": mass pilgrimages to water sources in the USSR in the middle of the XX century

The relevance of the work is determined by the importance of scientific understanding of the role and place of non-temple religious practices in the confessional history of the Soviet society. The purpose of the research is to analyze the features of the phenomenon of pilgrimages of believers to water sources in the late Stalinist period. Objectives : to find out the scale of pilgrimage of Soviet citizens to sources revered as "holy" in the middle of the XX century, to study the motivation of participants of relevant practices, to characterize the attitude of local authorities to such manifestations of religiosity. Methods . In the course of working with archival documents the author used historical induction, historical description, historical comparison as well as the historical retrospective method. Results . The paper provides an overview of the cases of veneration of "holy" springs, wells and lakes recorded by the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church in the late 1940s - early 1950s. The most characteristic features of their organization, the peculiarities of the social, gender and age composition of the participants are considered. It is pointed out the borderline nature of the relevant religious practices which were nominally Orthodox, but actually had a pagan component. Conclusions . Mass gatherings of believers near water sources for ritual purposes were not uncommon in the late Stalinist period. Citizens faced with a shortage of churches and clergy were pushed to such practices by both religious and social motives, including health care. On holidays the number of people at individual "holy" reservoirs in different parts of the country was measured in hundreds or thousands, while real opposition to pilgrimages from local authorities was rare and uncertain.