Iconographic version “Copy of the Icon of St. Nicholas on the Nikolsky Gates of the Kremlin, which Suffered from Shelling During the Revolution of 1917”: To the history of political cults in the period of the Civil War
Authors:   Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Zhuravlev Vadim V. 
Published: December 2024

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the history of the iconographic version “Copy of the Icon of St. Nicholas on the Nikolsky Gates of the Kremlin, which Suffered from Shelling During the Revolution of 1917 on 31 October”. This will make it possible to add information on the religious and political-ideological evolution of Russian society during the Civil War. The type of the icon under study reproduced the appearance of the fresco of St. Nicholas from one of the Kremlin towers after its damage during the storming of the citadel by the Red Guards. After the spontaneous destruction of the decorative red cloth hiding the icon on 2 May 1918, which many Orthodox believers perceived as a miracle, this icon acquired the status of an anti-Bolshevik symbol. It is likely that between 22 May and mid-June 1918 at least two surviving copies of the damaged Kremlin fresco were produced in Moscow or in the central region, in one of the icon-painting workshops. The article explains under what circumstances, when and why one of these icons ended up in Perm, at Archbishop Andronik (Nikolsky). The circumstances of the presentation of this icon to Alexander Kolchak as a blessing by the administrator of the Perm Eparchy, Bishop Boris (Shipulin), are detailed. On 15–16 March 1919, during the meetings between Kolchak and Archbishop Sylvester (Olshevsky), two initiatives were launched. First, it was decided to publish a mass of leaflets with an image of the icon and a story about it. Second, it was decided to hold two “religious-patriotic processions” in Omsk on 23 March and 30 March 1919, with the gift from Bishop Boris at the center of these demonstrations. Soon, the Russkaya Armiya newspaper published an article “Significant Icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker”. Therein, the creators of the newly formed cult outlined a kind of a “legend about the miracle-working icon”. Both processions received a broad media coverage and contributed to the design of the ideology of the Kolchak regime. The political part of the action went beyond the confessional boundaries; representatives of the interventionists—Protestants and Catholics—played an important role there. The article describes and analyses eight images of this iconographic version, some of which are introduced for the first time. The information is added about the iconographers who made some of these icons: A.Y. Vashurov and I.V. Volkov. The history of these icons at the final stage of the Civil War and afterwards in emigration is reconstructed. The conclusion is made that Orthodox religiosity was widely and deliberately used by the counter-revolutionary authorities for the purposes of political mobilisation. The powerful religious substratum of Russian culture favoured the emergence of new but intrinsically traditional symbols, like this icon. However, the mobilisation potential of the new symbols was limited by the general nature of the ideological system of the anti-Bolshevik movement. Religious symbolism failed to become a truly consolidating political instrument.