The USSR and the Vatican in 1942: missed opportunities

The article deals with two attempts of the Soviet authorities to start a dialogue with the Vatican on normalization of mutual relations, which took place in March and May 1942. The reconstruction of these attempts is based on the documents of the representative of the Catholic Church in Moscow, Father Leopold Braun, kept in the archive of the Vatican State Secretariat. The need to normalise relations between the USSR and the centre of the Catholic world had been gradually realised since the autumn of 1941, when it became clear that the Soviet Union's reputation as a persecutor of religion was causing protests from religious, including Catholic, circles in the USA against its involvement in the Lend-Lease programme. In the spring of 1942, the Soviet side tried to demonstrate to the Holy See the anti-Christian nature of Nazi religious policy in the occupied territories of the USSR, hoping that this would create conditions for a correction of the attitude of the centre of the Catholic world towards the USSR. However, this did not happen because of the Vatican’s deep distrust of the Soviet side, the anti-communism of its leaders and their unwillingness to take a position of complete condemnation of Germany and its allies. On the contrary, the Vatican continued to make plans to develop missionary activities in the Soviet territories occupied by the Nazis and their allies. As a result, the Holy See missed the chance to make the Catholic Church one of the beneficiaries of the ‘new deal’ of Stalin’s religious policy, which would begin to unfold in 1943.