ДІЯЛЬНІСТЬ ГРОМАД СВІДКІВ ЄГОВИ У ЗВІТАХ УПОВНОВАЖЕНОГО РАДИ У СПРАВАХ РЕЛІГІЙНИХ КУЛЬТІВ ПО ЗАКАРПАТСЬКІЙ ОБЛАСТІ (1946 – 1953 РР.)

The article, based on the reports of the Commissioner of the Council for Religious Cults in the Transcarpathian region, examines the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses communities during the Stalinist totalitarian regime. The processed documents are stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Transcarpathian region and have mostly remained unnoticed by researchers. From Kyiv and Moscow, the regional Commissioner of the Council was tasked with a detailed study of Jehovah's Witnesses and the maximum restriction of their activities. A chronological analysis of the documents indicates that Soviet officials responsible for religion and cults were superficially familiar with the specifics of the region, did not have information about the number of Jehovah's Witnesses communities, and were not familiar with the specifics of the cult and the periodization of the emergence of this movement in the region. The Commissioner tried to identify the number of believers in settlements, places of prayer meetings, attitudes towards passportization, collectivization, and tax payment. The reports state that Jehovah's Witnesses did not want to participate in the activities of the Soviet government, ignored the elections, opposed military service, and forbade children from attending school. The author managed to uncover the facts that the commissioner passed on the information he had discovered about Jehovah's Witnesses to the bodies of the Ministry of State Security, which used the materials for repression and exile of activists and ordinary believers. The intensification of the study of Jehovah's Witnesses by regional commissioners coincided with the holding of elections to the union and local authorities. In addition to repressions, lectures were held among Jehovah's Witnesses, and attempts were made to involve them in cultural and mass work. The article provides information that Jehovah's Witnesses began to use secret apartments for meetings, adapted to the pressure of the Soviet system, and agreed to minor compromises with their conscience for the survival and preservation of their communities.