Editing Inochentism (section)

===Gulag and later revival===
[[File:Указ Президиума ВС СССР от 30.09.1965.jpg|thumb|220px|1965 ''Ukase'' granting amnesty to Operation North deportees, including the Inochentists.]]
After Bessarabia was again incorporated in the Soviet Union as the [[Moldavian SSR]], the Inochentists gathered their ranks and established a new center in the city of [[Bălți]].<ref name="rlmisteriosii">{{in lang|ro}} [http://www.romanialibera.ro/actualitate/europa/misteriosii-adepti-ai-ieromonahului-eretic-inochentie-187304.html "Misterioșii adepți ai ieromonahului eretic Inochentie"], in ''[[România Liberă]]'' online edition, May 22, 2010; retrieved August 15, 2011.</ref> They were accused by the Soviet authorities of sabotaging the state plan for agricultural deliveries and resisting the [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|collectivization of agriculture]] by withholding grain from the authorities. This was, however, a thing common to the Moldavian peasants of all religions.<ref name="Kolarz"/> In a memorandum dated October 17, 1946, B. Kozachenko, the Vice-minister of State Security of the Moldavian SSR, reported that virtually every village in four districts of Bessarabia (Bălți, [[Soroca District|Soroca]], [[Orhei]] and [[Chișinău]]) each had a group of Inochentists, and that their priests were among the "most [[reactionary]] and backward".<ref name="Clay259"/> This memorandum resulted in a repression of the Inochentists, which started only a few months later. In January 1947, ten Inochenist leaders were sentenced to terms between six and ten years in the "[[Gulag|corrective labor camps]]".<ref name="jec260">Clay, p. 260.</ref>

On April 6, 1949, [[Operation South]] began, as a mass deportation to [[Siberia]] of people (and their families) who were suspected of [[Anti-Sovietism|anti-Soviet feelings]]. This included 35,000 people, not just wealthy peasants and former landowners, but also members of sects deemed illegal, including Inochentists. Two years later, on March 3, 1951, another wave of deportations began, as [[Operation North]], which also deported all members of the Jehovah's Witnesses. The deportees were allowed to return home only after Soviet leader [[Joseph Stalin]] died and [[Nikita Khrushchev]] gave his famous [[On the Personality Cult and its Consequences|De-Stalinization speech]] of 1956. According to a 1957 report, 150 Inochentists were back in the Moldavian SSR.<ref name="jec260"/>

In April and May 1957, another group of Inochentist leaders were arrested. The main local newspaper, ''[[Sovetskaya Moldaviya]]'', ran attacks on the Inochenitists and a negative propaganda film was made in reference to them. The persecutions were intensified during [[USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964)|Khrushchev's campaign of religious persecutions]], which lasted between 1959 and 1964. By the end of the campaign, 20 illegal churches and all the monasteries that supported to the movement from its very beginning had been closed, all of them in the Moldavian SSR.<ref name="jec260"/> Internal memos of the Soviet administration show that the campaign was relatively successful: in 1960, a report had it that the number of Inochenitists dropped from 2,000 to just 250. Nevertheless, their religious group survived and the Soviet authorities continued publishing pamphlets even in the 1980s. In 1987, it was reported that an Inochentist community still existed near the ruins of Inochenție's monastery in Balta, [[Ukrainian SSR]].<ref>Clay, p. 261.</ref> Meanwhile, the location where Inochenție began his mission had been turned into a gym.<ref name="dlbalta">{{in lang|ro}} Dorin Lozovanu, [http://astra.iasi.roedu.net/texte/lozovanu.html "Balta – orașul în care românii nu au spus niciodată ''bună ziua'' pe rusește"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111009104640/http://astra.iasi.roedu.net/texte/lozovanu.html |date=October 9, 2011 }}, in ''Revista Română'' ([[Asociația Transilvană pentru Literatura Română și Cultura Poporului Român|ASTRA]]), Nr. 3/1998.</ref>

Inside Romania, itself under a [[Communist Romania|communist government]] from 1948 to 1989, the Inochentists continued to be explicitly banned alongside Jehovah's Witnesses, Bible students and the other groups listed in 1930s bans. The basic legislation was Government Decree 243, passed in September 1948. It resulted in a circular letter of the [[Ministry of Administration and Interior (Romania)|Internal Affairs Ministry]], which included the listed Inochentists and other Orthodox splinter groups among the lesser threats by comparison with foreign-born new religions, and specified of the former: "These banned religious associations are intensely active in propagating anarchic ideas which damage public opinion and the security of the State. All those who are suspected of being affiliated with these sects are to be held under continuous supervision, tracked down in all their enterprises, and, once certified, they are to be sent to court."<ref>{{in lang|ro}} Nicolae Videnie, [http://www.memoria.ro/?location=view_article&id=1724 "1948. Tragedia bisericilor din România. Legislație"], at the [http://www.memoria.ro/ Memoria Digital Library]; retrieved August 15, 2011.</ref>

Although Inochentism was not included among those movements who could seek assistance abroad, and who were therefore listed as especially dangerous, Romanian officials even assumed that the Inochentists were spying for the United States.<ref>{{in lang|ro}} [[William Totok]], [http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Episcopul-Hitler-si-Securitatea-%28I%29*articleID_12463-articles_details.html "Episcopul, Hitler și Securitatea (I)"], in ''[[Observator Cultural]]'', Nr. 252-253, December 2004.</ref> The discrepancies were noted by researcher Nicolae Ioniță, who found that homegrown sects, Inochentism included, were much more exposed to persecution than international churches.<ref>{{in lang|ro}} Nicolae Ioniță, " 'Martorii lui Iehova' în arhivele Securității române – problema tolerării activității cultului", in [http://www.cnsas.ro/documente/caiete/Caiete_CNSAS_nr_2_2008.pdf ''Caietele CNSAS'', Nr. 2/2008], p. 201.</ref>

An Inochentist revival was taking place in the two decades after the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]]. In the late 1990s, an elderly Inochentist group was still residing in Balta, the "New Jerusalem" envisioned by Inochenție.<ref name="dlbalta"/> Another presence was noticed elsewhere in Ukraine's [[Odesa Oblast]]. The story was covered in 2010 by ''[[Segodnya (1997)|Segodnya]]'' newspaper, who cited cases of Inochentists who awaited the Second Coming, built at a new subterranean monastery, and vocally demanded that Inochenție be recognized a saint of the [[Russian Orthodox Church]] (which still refers to them as to a heretic sect).<ref name="rlmisteriosii"/> Most adherents, however, are residents of either Romania or the [[Republic of Moldova]]—a few thousands, mostly descendants of 1920s converts.<ref name="rlmisteriosii"/>