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[CHURCH IN THE EARLY USSR] Sluzhebnik na russkom iazyke. Sobranie Bozhestvennykh liturgii, sovershaemykh Pravoslavnoiu Rossiiskoiu Tserkov’iu [i.e. Liturgicon in Russian. Collection of the Divine Liturgies Performed by the Russian Orthodox Church].

Nizhny-Novgorod: 1924. Item #1873

[2], XII, 122, [1] pp. 17,5x12 cm. In contemporary cloth binding with front cover glued above. Covers soiled, small hole in cloth on spine, leaves of endpapers and some sections detached from each other, some ink corrections, otherwise good.

First and only edition. One of 2000 copies. Extremely rare.
The book was compiled by priest Valisy Adamenko known as hieromonk Feofan (1885-1937). Valisy Adamenko was a missionary and translator of service texts into Russian common language.
He was born into a Kuban Cossack family and moved to Odessa in his youth. There he studied within eparchical courses for anti-sect missionaries. Since 1916, he became a deacon and then a priest. Since 1917, he was in missionary service in South Russia and gained popularity as a preacher. During the Civil War, Adamenko was in conflict with both the White authorities, whom he sharply denounced for their persecution and inattention to the poor, and with the Reds. He was arrested several times and was sentenced to a correctional house in Nizhny Novgorod in 1919. To conduct services in Russian, the priest joined the Renovated Church in 1922 and since then served in the Elias Church in Nizhny Novgorod. The Renovated Church united puppet religious administrations completely controlled by the Soviet regime. However, there the translation of liturgical texts was launched and he managed to hold services in Russian.
Translations were carried out by Adamenko himself, members of the community and persons not belonging to the community. Correspondence, reprinting, editorial and publishing works were carried out by members of the community. Editions were printed in a printing shop of a correctional labor house. Community members carried out proofreading work and sometimes participated in typesetting.
This book also came out from the printing shop of the Correctional Labor House #1. It contains the rites of three liturgies. The foreword was written by Adamenko and was decorated with an ordinary floral headpiece. The next headpiece is more complicated: the Orthodox cross consists of hyphens.
Some representatives of the Renovated Church condemned Adamenko and denounced his enthusiasm, some made attempts to liquidate the community. On December 9, 1931, Valisy Adamenko was arrested and sentenced to the Krasno-Vishera camp [the Perm Region]. Soon after his arrest, the local Renovationist Directorate reported on unrest in the community of the Elias Church in connection with the arrest of Archpriest Adamenko, “which revealed completely unhealthy deviations of the community, in the spirit of autocephalism and even outright sectarianism”.
The hieromonk was released in 1934 but arrested again the next year. He served a new term in the Karaganda camps [Kazakhstan], where he participated in secret religious services. In 1937, Valisy Adamenko was murdered.

Not found in Worldcat.

Price: $1,500.00