page_title: Etchmiadzin Cathedral
section_title: Suppression
hierarchical_section_title: Etchmiadzin Cathedral / History / Soviet period / Suppression
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Почтовая марка СССР. Эчмиадзинский собор, 1978
context_page_description: Etchmiadzin Cathedral is the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church, located in the city of Vagharshapat, Armenia. According to most scholars it was the first cathedral built in ancient Armenia, and is often considered the oldest cathedral in the world.
  The original church was built in the early fourth century—between 301 and 303 according to tradition—by Armenia's patron saint Gregory the Illuminator, following the adoption of Christianity as a state religion by King Tiridates III. It was built over a pagan temple, symbolizing the conversion from paganism to Christianity. The core of the current building was built in 483/4 by Vahan Mamikonian after the cathedral was severely damaged in a Persian invasion. From its foundation until the second half of the fifth century, Etchmiadzin was the seat of the Catholicos, the supreme head of the Armenian Church.
  Although never losing its significance, the cathedral subsequently suffered centuries of virtual neglect. In 1441 it was restored as catholicosate and remains as such to this day. Since then the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin has been the administrative headquarters of the Armenian Church.
context_section_description: After two years of independence, Armenia was Sovietized in December 1920. During the 1921 February Uprising Etchmiadzin was briefly (until April) taken over by the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation, which had dominated the pre-Soviet Armenian government between 1918 and 1920.
  In December 1923, the southern apse of the cathedral collapsed. It was restored under Toros Toramanian's supervision in what was the first case of restoration of an architectural monument in Soviet Armenia.
  During the Great Purge and the radical state atheist policies in the late 1930s, the cathedral was a "besieged institution as the campaign was underway to eradicate religion." The repressions climaxed in 1938 when Catholicos Khoren I was murdered in April by the NKVD. In August of that year, the Armenian Communist Party decided to close down the cathedral, but the central Soviet government seemingly did not approve of such a measure. Isolated from the outside world, the cathedral barely continued to function and its administrators were reduced to some twenty people. It was reportedly the only church in Soviet Armenia not to have been seized by the Communist government. The dissident anti-Soviet Armenian diocese in the US wrote that "the great cathedral became a hollow monument."
caption: The Soviet government issued a postage stamp depicting the cathedral in 1978.
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