Documents of the Archives of the Sumy Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a Source for a Prosopographical Portrait of the Orthodox Clergy of Ukraine (mid-1940s – 1980s)

The purpose of the work is to characterise the specifics of the archival documents of the Sumy Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a historical source and to determine their scientific and informational potential for the reconstruction of the prosopographic portrait of the Orthodox clergy of post-war Soviet Ukraine. Research methodology. The methodological basis of the study is a source-based approach aimed at the systematic analysis of archival documents as carriers of structured information about the Orthodox clergy's social, professional and personal characteristics. Within the framework of this approach, the archival documents of the Sumy Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church are considered a complex of mass and individualised sources that allow for the reconstruction of biographical and prosopographic clergy data in the context of Soviet religious policy. The study uses several methods, including prosopographic, historical-biographical, comparative-historical, content analysis, and critical analysis of sources. The comprehensive application of these methods provided a high degree of analytical depth to the study. It allowed for the revelation of the potential of the source base for further studies in the Church history and social history of the Soviet period. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the introduction into scientific circulation of an array of little-known archival documents stored in the archives of the Sumy Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church. For the first time, an analysis of the sources of the diocesan archive was carried out, and their scientific and information potential was determined for the reconstruction of the prosopographic portrait of the Orthodox clergy of the mid-1940s to 1980s. Conclusions. The archival materials of the Sumy Diocese of Ukrainian Orthodox Church significantly enrich the source base for the prosopographic study of the Orthodox clergy of the Soviet period. Analysis of personal files, questionnaires, parish documentation and service reports allows us to reconstruct the biographical data of priests, trace the dynamics of their educational and social status, attitude to the authorities and adaptation to anti-religious policies. The applied archival methods confirmed the effectiveness of the prosopographic approach for reproducing personnel structures and internal processes in the church environment. The results that were obtained lay the foundation for further research on the clergy not only in the regional context but also in the national context.