How many Orthodox Christians were martyred in Russia between Revolution and Fall of Berlin Wall?

Answer 1

There are no sure and reliable data from the Soviet era in Russia to record how many of its citizens were murdered by the regime; and definitely no accurate way to determine how many of the regime's victims were Orthodox Christians. Moreover, to be "martyred" one has to die for one's faith. Although many thousands of Orthodox clergy were murdered by the Soviets simply because they were clergy, that still leaves millions of murdered lay Soviet citizens, the majority of them Orthodox. Most of them were not killed specifically because they happened to be Christian. So, are they still to be counted as martyrs?

To illustrate the first problem in answering your question, please look at the graph at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.FIG1.1.GIF
You will see that there is a vast range in the estimates of how many people were killed by the Soviets over the period 1917-87: the lowest estimate is about 30 million; the highest estimate is about 130 million.

Rummel's research (see link below) into the scale and range of
Soviet genocide seems to be the most inclusive and authoritative work on this grisly subject. But even Rummel makes no attempt to assign religious affiliations to the millions of victims.

However, if you really must have a "ballpark" number for the Orthodox Christians murdered by the Soviets, let's begin with Rummel's "most likely" estimate of total murders: 61,911,000 people; 54,769,000 of whom were USSR citizens.

Next, let's assume that the 54,769,000 murdered USSR citizens were a representative fraction (a BIG fraction!) of the population as a whole.

According to most estimates, about 75% of Russia's population was (at least nominally) Russian Orthodox immediately prior to the Communist Revolution.

So, for a very rough estimate of how many Orthodox Christians were murdered by the Communist Regime, take 75% of 54,769,000. Answer = 41,076,750.

In terms of clergy, a very high proportion of 1917's bishops, priests, monks and nuns were murdered by the Soviets, mainly in the two great anti-church offensives of 1918-22 and 1929-30. According to a Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Orthodox_Church#Twentieth_century_and_revolution
"In 1914 in Russia there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns."
Although we can't assume that the closure of a church invariably meant that its priest had been murdered, we do know that the number of churches in at least occasional use for services had declined by 1929 to around 39,000. By April 1st, 1936, only 15,835 were still in use; and only 17,857 priests were still registered as such.