Confiscated family album Bessarabia and Odessa

These photographs are part of a family album found on a woman who tried to cross the border between
USSR and Romania that was confiscated by the Soviet secret police in 1940. They depict different
moments from the life of the family, such as a wedding and a day spent at the seaside in Odessa.. The
album contains images of members of the family at different ages and of some of the family’s friends.

For over a hundred years both banks of Dniester river were part of the Russian Empire until 1918 when
Bessarabia united with Romania and the river became frontier between Romania and the Soviet Union.
The new border and the hostilities between the Soviet Union and Romania brought numerous changes
to the region but did not put an end to the personal ties between the people on the two banks of the
river. In the winter of 1940, a woman of Bessarabian origin living in Odessa tried to join her family that
lived on the Romanian side of the frontier by crossing the frozen river Dniester. The border was
frequently transgressed from both sides by people seeking a better life or escaping repression. The
number of illegal crossings from the Soviet side in Romania increased during the famines and during the
collectivisation of agriculture. Some of the inhabitants of the villages located close to the river also
crossed to visit their relatives across the border or practiced smuggling. Those wanting to flee from the
country were helped by the people living in the border area who knew the best places to cross Dniester.
Many were arrested or even killed when trying to cross. The women whose family album was
confiscated by the Soviet secret police tried to illegally cross the border with the help of a guide from
Nezavertailovca, a village near Tiraspol. They were both arrested and sentenced to five and three years
imprisonment respectively.

Family albums were of interest to secret police as the the Communist Party’s project of social
engineering required extraordinary powers of the state over the citizen, including in his/her family life.
The Soviet state was therefore very attentive to kinship relations, which from the regime’s perspective
could in certain conditions undermine ones devotion to the state and the party. Collecting family
pictures, as well as registering data regarding family networks of those who had been convicted was
part of the secret police’s attempt to identify those parts of the society from where anti-Soviet elements
were more likely to come.

The album shown here was found on a person who had relatives abroad as some of the persons
depicted in the photographs lived in Romania. The album therefore could be used to prove the existence
of cross-border networks that were perceived as dangerous and may also have been used to identify
other would be transgressors.

Likewise, the family photographs could provide secret police with data regarding the past of the
arrested persons. The photographs allowed the officers to identify places visited by the convicted
persons, and to read on their reverse notes about personal impressions, fillings, and attitudes.
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Confiscated images of Archangelist women Moldova

Description

These photographs were confiscated by the secret police of the Moldavian SSR from a community of
Archangelists in 1952. Archangelism inherited the iconographic tradition of Eastern Christianity and
developed them creatively using modern techniques of photograph, photocopying, collage and
multiplication. The first image was produced using the technique of photo collage. The creator of the
image has utilised a copy of an Orthodox icon showing a female saint replacing the face of the saint with
a photograph of the face of Elena Culiac, venerated by Archangelists as the embodiment of Virgin Mary
or the Mother of God as she is more commonly referred to in Orthodox Christianity. She was the wife of
Alexandru Culiac, one of the founders of Archangelism who was considered to be the embodiment of
the Archangel Michael by the believers. Above the image of Elena Culiac, there is a writing similar to that
used on classic orthodox icons that praises her as a saint and as an empress. The other two photographs
show two groups of Archangelist women preachers. They are dressed monastic-style robes, holding
icons and crosses in a stance similar to those seen in iconographic representations of saints.

Archangelism emerged in Bessarabia from mainstream Eastern Orthodox Christianity but one of its
distinctive features was the central role that women came to play. Unlike mainstream Christianity where
only men can become priests, in Archangelism women hold leadership positions and officiate some
religious services. The women had different roles and levels of status inside the community and these
hierarchical differences are depicted in their visual representations. Elena Culiac was worshiped as the
embodiment of Virgin Mary and she is represented according to sacred iconographic traditions. The first
image creates a connection between these older representations of the Virgin Mary and Elena Culiac,
encouraging the believer to worship her through this image. The clothes and stance of the women in the
second and third photographs, who are shown standing or sitting in distinctive poses, underline their
status as preachers. These icon-like images, however, do not gives them the same aura of sanctity
associated with Elena Culiac. The small icons held in their hands may be intended to underline this
difference. It is unlikely that these photographs fulfilled the same purpose as the photo-icon of Elena
Culeac. The women depicted on the second and the third photographs were rather messengers of the
embodied saints of the movement. There role was to deliver the word and the icons of the embodied
saints to believers.

It is no coincidence that three of five icons held by the preachers represent Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary
is the most venerated female saint in Christianity and for Archangelist women the association with her
person was the highest mark of respect and status.
Not all women in the second and in the third photographs share the same status. According to police
records and as the images suggest, one of them held more authority. The women represented seating
on the second photograph and sitting on the left side in the third picture held a leadership role in the
community. Her status is marked by a special headscarf on the second picture, and by a handkerchief
placed on her left lap on the second image. Both the headscarf and the handkerchief are decorated with
crosses. On both photographs she is seated on the chair in a central position.

These confiscated photographs were used by the police as evidence of the women's involvement in an
illegal sect and as a means of identification of other members of the group. Through these photographs
the police tried to reconstruct the network of Archangelists in the south of the Moldovan SSR.

These photographs are attached to a secret police investigation case file created in 1952. Today the file
is preserved under number 3716 at the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova, fond R-3401,
inventory 1. It contains a total number of 14 photographs that include one mugshot, one picture
showing confiscated religious items produced by the police and 12 confiscated photographs.

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Commemoration of the dead by a family in Bessarabia

The photograph shows a family from Bessarabia in a cemetery of Chilia Nouă celebrating Paștele
Blajinilor (in Romanian) or Radonitsa (in Russian), the day when the Orthodox Christian families
commemorate their deceased relatives. Almsgiving has a central place in the commemoration of the
dead in Orthodox Christian tradition. It is believed that by offering to each other bread, cookies, fruits,
tableware items and drinks, the believers redeem the sins of their deceased relatives, and satiate the
dead’s thirst and hunger. This is why the grave in the image is covered with various items that were due
to be offered as gifts. Celebrated one week after the Orthodox Easter, Paștele Blajinilor or Radonitsa is a
day when the entire family are gathered in the cemetery. This family used this occasion to take a
picture, a copy of which was later sent to a relative who could not attend the commemoration and who
was arrested by the Soviet secret police in 1940. The photograph was confiscated from a woman
arrested when trying to flee from USSR to Bessarabia (at that time part of Romania). The photograph
was important for the secret police investigation because it depicted cross-border family networks.

The photograph have been attached to the investigation file 595 that is preserved in the archival found
R-3401, inventory 1, at the National Archive of the Republic of Moldova. The file contains another 21
family photographs, a birth certificate and a visa issued in 1937 by the Romanian Royal Diplomatic
Legacy in Odessa.

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Defaced portraits of Soviet leaders Moldova

These mass produced postcard-sized portraits of three soviet leaders, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria
and Anastas Mikoyan, have been torn and inserted into an envelope as evidence in a secret police
personal file referring to a collective penal case. They were found during the search of a house of an
Inochentist leader on February 11th 1953, a few weeks before Stalin’s death.

From the perspective of secret police, the disrespectful attitude towards the abovementioned leaders of
those who had torn these pictures equated to an anti-Soviet act. The origin of the defaced images is
open to a number of possible interpretations. Given the fact that the secret police officers claimed to
have found the small portraits in the attic of the Inochentist leader’s house, the size of the portraits and
the fact that the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is missing from amongst them, the photographs may
constitute fake evidence created by the secret police or somebody in collaboration with them. However,
the tearing of the image of any of the Soviet leaders would have been a risky strategy even for high
ranking secret police officers. Alternatively, the portraits may have been torn by the Inochentist
community themselves. The case against the leaders of the community does not mention the torn
pictures but instead translates the group’s actions into the language of the Soviet criminal code. The
leaders of the group were convicted for creating an anti-Soviet sect, organizing illegal religious meetings
and encouraging peasants not to fulfil their obligations towards the state. One of the two on trial was
also convicted for having formerly collaborated with Nazi forces. This file is a good example of how
problematic interpreting secret police files can be and the often ambiguous nature of the evidence
presented within them.

The Soviet regime had its own iconographic tradition, which aimed at dominating the gaze of Soviet
citizens who were supposed to participate in the building of Socialism in USSR. Soviet policy in the
Moldavian countryside was not only a project of transforming the social and economic life of the
villages, but also aimed at replacing the culture of traditional peasant communities with a new Stalinist
culture in which there was no place for religion. The Inochentist communities, which were perceived as
anti-Soviet sectarians, represented an obstacle towards the projects of the Soviet state. As with Eastern
Orthodoxy more generally, the vernacular tradition of the Inochentists attributed a major role to icons.
The intrusion of atheist Soviet iconography into the everyday life of villages seriously disturbed
Inochentist sensibilities. Later in the case file, a few days after Stalin’s death one of the witnesses
reported having heard one of the Inochentist leaders saying “why do you hang his portrait, is he a saint
to be viewed by everyone, or what?” This case nicely illustrates the battle to dominate the gaze of
Soviet peasantry.
Inochentism represents a form of local vernacular Orthodoxy drawing heavily on the conservative
monastic tradition. During the first decades of the 20th century several versions of Inochentism
emerged in Bessarabia. The abovementioned case refers to the followers of Ioan Zlotea. When the
territory of Bessarabia was (re)occupied by Soviet forces in 1944, Inochentists once again became a
target due to their maintenance of values opposed to Soviet policies applied in the countryside.
Accusations included refusing the draft to the army, resisting mobilization for work on Sundays, refusing
to vote in elections and refusing to join the Communist Youth Organizations. In the context of
collectivization of agriculture and the recent famine in Moldova Inochentists shared a culture of
apocalyptic rumor with many other religious groups in rural Russia and Ukraine.

These images can be found in the file ASIS, 023171, Vol. 1-2. This file also contains nine mugshots of one
arrested Inochentist and two other unknown persons produced by secret police and used in the secret
police lineup. The identification of the arrested Inochentist took place in Soviet Ukraine, in the village
where, according to the file, he served as a policeman during the German occupation. In addition, the
file contains three mugshots of sentenced Inochentist leaders taken by secret police officers as a
standard procedure during registration of the identity of the arrested persons.

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