At a Crossroads. Village Priests After October 1917

Despite all the global socio-economic changes and reforms, emanating from state institutions, or revolutions, mixing classes and social strata, changing types of property and social relations, an individual, as a subject with free will and having the opportunity to choose, has always independently decided which side to take in these changes, along which road to go further in one's personal destiny. Such a decision has always been difficult and its consequences have been different. It has been especially difficult for people who have had an understanding of their presence in other people's lives, not only in a professional and economic sense, but also in a spiritual one to support and guide large masses of the population on the spiritual and moral path of life. Using the example of the fates of three priests from the villages of Aleksashkino, Morshanovka, and Maly Uzen (the modern Piterka district of the Saratov Region), this article attempts to analyze the motives of the rural clergy in the early years of the establishment of Soviet power in the territory of today's Saratov region. The research is based on previously unpublished materials from the collections of the State Archive of the Saratov Region and the archive of the Office of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation for the Saratov region.