Report from Curate Justinas Bonaventura Pranaitis on the State of the Turkestan Parish as of November 1915

Abstract

The handwritten original of the published letter from priest I. B. Pranaitis to Bishop Jan Tseplyak is kept in the personal file of the former, in fund No. 826 of the Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA). This message stands out among other documents of the case in that it contains information not about a private single issue (moving, appointment, complaint, construction, etc.), but is an overview of the situation in the entire vast Turkestan parish as of November 1915.

The letter informs about the arrival in Turkestan in 1915 of a significant number of immigrants due to military operations in the west of the empire, about the high mortality rate among them and the lack of chaplains, about priests-prisoners of war in the parish, about the activities of the Committees for Relief of War Victims, about the construction of a temple and about plans for the establishment of a Siberian diocese.