A New Source on the Family History of Marshal A.M. Vasilevsky

It is for the first time that a new source on the family history of Marshal of the Soviet Union A.M. Vasilevsky is published. It is the questionnaire of his father, priest M.A. Vasilevsky, written in December 1919 at the request of the Ivanovo-Voznesensky GubCheka during a mass survey of the clergy of the Kineshma district of Ivanovo-Voznesensky province. The Soviet authorities conducted this survey in order to obtain information about the mood of the clergy during the period under review and for further planning of their anti-church policy. The questionnaire is interesting because, firstly, it contains little-known information about the attitude of A.M. Vasilevsky’s father to the Soviet government, to the decree on the separation of church from state and school from church. Secondly, it contains information about the financial situation of the family of A.M. Vasilevsky during the Civil War. Thirdly, the document is an interesting historical source on the situation of the provincial clergy in the early years of Soviet power. Publishing the document, the authors conclude that M.A. Vasilevsky, like the majority of the clergy of the Kineshma district, positively accepted the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars, hoping for the declared non-interference of the Soviet state in church life. At the same time, a small part of the clergy expressed a negative attitude towards the separation of the school from the Church. However, in relation to the Soviet government, at least half of the clergy, including M.A. Vasilevsky, took a negative position, expressed in formally neutral formulations of the answers to the questionnaire points.