Order of the Presidium of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to all provincial emergency commissions No. 54 (dated April 29, 1920) on provincial commissions “for the protection of monuments of art and antiquity”

Abstract

Bodies of the Cheka — GPU — OGPU for many years collected and analyzed information about the processes that took place in various social strata, national, confessional, professional groups (in certain regions and across the country as a whole). The efforts of the Chekists were aimed at curbing covert and open opposition to Soviet power on the part of political opponents of the regime. Among other things, the authorities were interested in the mindset among civil servants, as well as among the scientific and creative intelligentsia. On April 29, 1920, the Presidium of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission issued order No. 54, addressed to the territorial bodies of the Cheka, with instructions to collect data on the activities of the provincial commissions “for the protection of monuments of art and antiquity”. The Chekists, first of all, were interested in information about the connections of museum employees with the clergy and teaching staff of the former religious educational institutions. Below is a list of information provided by employees of the Novgorod provincial Cheka and sent by them in parallel to the Secret Department of the Cheka and to the VIII Department of the People’s Commissariat of Justice of the RSFSR. The publication is carried out according to the original copy deposited in the A-353 fund of the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The document is accompanied by detailed comments, in particular, information about the employees of Novgorod museums: A. V. Nikiforovsky, S. K. Matveevsky, V. A. Kvashonkin and others. Particular attention is paid to the ups and downs of the biography of N. G. Porfiridov, a landmark person in the and one of the defendants in a large-scale criminal case initiated in January 1933 by employees of the Plenipotentiary Representation of the United State Political Directorate in the Leningrad Military District against a large group of people, including museum workers and local historians.