Turkestan Golgotha is an electronic database of repressed Orthodox clergy and laity associated with Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

In 2023, the work began in 2018 to create an electronic database of all repressed clergy and laity of the Russian Orthodox Church whose lives are connected with Kazakhstan and Central Asia, titled Turkestan Golgotha, was completed. The project is carried out with the blessing of Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan, Head of the Kazakhstani Metropolitan District, and Metropolitan Vincent of Tashkent and Uzbekistan, Head of the Central Asian Metropolitan District.

Project curators include Ekaterina Evgenyevna Ozmitel, Senior Researcher of the Department of Contemporary History of the Russian Orthodox Church at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, and Reader Maxim Leonidovich Ivashko, member of the canonization commission of the Kazakhstani Metropolitan District.

Most of the biographies on the website were published by researcher Sergey Valentinovich Chertkov, an experienced archivist and editor with extensive research expertise, including the biographical volume on the All-Russian Local Council participants of 1917–1918 and biographer of Protopriest Valentin Svencitsky. A significant contribution to the database was made by Vladimir Vladimirovich Kutishchev, a local historian from Uralsk.

Through this project, canonization commissions from 12 dioceses across two metropolitan districts and independent researchers from five countries have compiled biographical entries and published the most comprehensive and reliable data on repressed Orthodox believers from Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The work involves correcting inaccuracies and updating the lives of the new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Church.

To date, 5,771 individuals have been identified, with biographies and source references available for each. However, this number is not final. All 20th-century historical research encounters the limitation that only rehabilitated repressed individuals are known, while the rest remain unrecorded until archives are re-opened. Kazakhstan had open archives longer than Russia, allowing the identification of a substantial number of names.

Based on this database, a Martyrology will be published, containing biographical data on Orthodox believers (both glorified and not glorified) who suffered for Christ and the Orthodox Church under the godless regime. It will include those born, serving, confessing, or martyring in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

A key part of the project has been creating the Turkestan Golgotha website. This internet portal is intended to enhance the scientific effectiveness of the research, attract new specialists, and make knowledge exchange more accessible to a broader audience. The website hosts a database, gathers literature and sources on the history of the Church in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, and facilitates verification, discussion, and collective assessment of biographies. It supports collaboration in finding reliable facts and addressing issues such as source shortages and inaccuracies in biographies.

The project’s curators invite researchers to participate in studying the sacrifices of Russian Orthodox clergy and laity during the Soviet regime.

The Turkestan Golgotha database can be accessed at turkestanskaya-golgofa.info.

Criteria for Including Names in the Turkestan Golgotha Database

The database includes all those who suffered for Christ and were somehow connected with Kazakhstan and Central Asia—whether by birth, service, or exile in these regions. Those associated with the Church in any way were included: not only priests, monks, and nuns but also choir members, church caretakers, wardens, and anyone who managed church affairs. If someone was known not only as a parishioner but as an active participant in church life, a member of the church council, a scholar writing theological works, or someone convicted on criminal charges for religious preaching or advocacy, they were included in the Turkestan Golgotha database. Direct ties to the Church mentioned during interrogation were certainly taken into account, as were catacomb Christians and Old Believers.

A separate section contains the records of 85 individuals who, though repressed, died outside communion with the Church. This includes those who renounced their clerical status or joined the Living Church. Their inclusion was deemed appropriate, as these were baptized Orthodox people. The information is carefully presented: some individuals were definitively known to have joined the Living Church, while for others, this status is noted with varying degrees of certainty. If someone who renounced their status publicly declared their disavowal of Christ in the press, they are considered apostate. Kazakhstan has well-preserved digital archives of 1930s newspapers, in which articles about renunciations often included denunciations of others by name. Renunciation alone was insufficient; a written denouncement was also required. Such articles verified that those named were indeed living in Kazakhstan, connected with the Church, and did not renounce it, for which they faced repression. Project participants sought out these individuals among the repressed and included them in the database.

In the mid-1920s, there was a widespread campaign against the renewal of icons, including legal proceedings. Central newspapers, such as Pravda and Izvestia, published articles on cases where up to thirty people were arrested on charges of fraudulent icon restoration. Project participants traced these individuals’ names in documents, finding some among those exiled to Kazakhstan. These were often ordinary peasants who either defended an icon or were church parishioners. Such people were also included in the database because they were involved in church-related cases, often as parishioners who spoke about the icon’s renewal or revered it as miraculous. Typically, dozens of individuals were involved in these cases.

Archival Work

In gathering information on each individual, meticulous work in archives was essential. A large number of files were declassified and transferred from the FSB archive to the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) in Moscow, where they are now freely accessible. Some information was also obtained from the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) in St. Petersburg.

According to Maxim Ivashko, the most challenging task was tracing the pre-revolutionary biographies of clergy. This required reading all regional Diocesan Records over a span of 30-40 years, published between 1860 and 1922 across the 63 dioceses of the Russian Church, to locate these individuals and document their movements.

Project researchers also extensively utilized the archival database for World War I, an underused resource even among both church and secular historians. This well-organized, publicly accessible database includes details on all those awarded, wounded, or killed in World War I, providing crucial information for clarifying the pre-revolutionary period in the biographies of the repressed. For instance, it revealed how many future priests served in World War I, became heroes, and were awarded honors before later taking holy orders in the 1920s. This speaks volumes about individuals who endured the war. Some cases emerged where a person lost an arm in the war and, despite their disability, served the Church, for which they were later repressed and executed.

The project also relied on the research database of Sergey Vladimirovich Volkov, a leading historian of the Civil War and White Movement. Through this resource, the researchers discovered that many future priests fought in the Civil War on both sides, sometimes even facing each other in bayonet charges. Later, in the 1920s, they took holy orders, only to be executed in the 1930s.

Information from Relatives of the Repressed

Information was also collected from relatives of the repressed, who sent photographs, testimonials, and memories. Some relatives were able to copy criminal case files in the 1990s and shared these documents. Few relatives of the repressed remained, as the families were nearly eradicated during the 1920s and 1930s, with only around ten percent surviving. Of those who did survive, only a handful of witnesses have lived to the present day, making each piece of testimony invaluable.

Information was restored on the lives of some notable individuals after their release from imprisonment. Typically, biographies in databases of the repressed conclude with “repressed, sentenced to ten years—end of record.” However, many endured the inhuman conditions of imprisonment, returned home, lived further, and even participated in Church activities.

Project participants and researchers contacted dioceses and metropolias in other countries—Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—where they also received assistance in gathering data for the database.

Highest Percentage of the Repressed: Nuns

The largest percentage of the repressed were nuns, who were sentenced in the early 1930s to the standard punishment of three years of exile in Kazakhstan. They numbered around 1,500. Most did not survive this sentence, as the conditions were unbearable. Many of these nuns were elderly. Transported like other prisoners in cattle cars with just four walls and a ceiling, they traveled for several days, with ten percent dying en route. Those who survived were dropped off either in an open field or a small settlement with no work, wages, or provisions. Two-thirds perished within the first years of exile.

Those who did survive often received a second sentence. At least a third returned from these exiles and continued living a church-centered life through the 1940s and 1950s.

Challenges in Clarifying Biographical Data

Errors often appeared in the sentences in the biographies of the repressed. For example, “three years of exile in Kazakhstan” might be recorded, but on closer examination, it turns out that the person was ultimately exiled to the North, in Arkhangelsk. During that period, sentences were often switched from south to north or vice versa. Thus, someone sentenced to exile in Kazakhstan might be reassigned due to overcrowding and sent elsewhere, typically north to Arkhangelsk or Murmansk.

Most New Martyrs in Kazakhstan. A New Saint

The number of new martyrs in Siberia is significantly smaller. This part of the country was designated for deportations during the collectivization period in the late 1920s and early 1930s, primarily for peasants and kulaks. Kazakhstan, by contrast, received a greater number of religious exiles.

In August 2023, a new saint, Protopriest Vasily Nosov, was canonized by the Chelyabinsk Metropolia, as he served and suffered for the faith there. However, he had also served in the Kustanay district before the revolution, thus earning a place in the Turkestan Golgotha database.