Пшемыслав Адамчевски, О римско-католическом костеле в Темир-Хан-Шуре (Буйнакске)
On a Roman-Catholic Church in Temirkhan-Shura (Buynaksk)

Summary/Abstract: The article presents the history of a Roman Catholic church building in Temirkhan-Shura (present-day Buynaksk, Dagestan, Russian Federation), which was constructed in the nineteenth century by Polish soldiers serving in the tsarist army deployed in the North Caucasus. The study is based on the archival materials kept in the Central State Archive of the Republic of Dagestan, Makhachkala, and the published memoirs of Poles who made any references to the church. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the parish in Temirkhan-Shura was the smallest of ten parishes, as it had only 360 parishioners. In contrast, the largest one - in Grozny - had 5,600. Analyses have shown that the church in Temirkhan-Shura was closely connected to Catholic soldiers from the Kingdom of Poland who served in the tsarist army. After Poland regained its independence at the end of the First World War (and most Poles residing in the Caucasus returned to their country) and the Bolsheviks took over rule in Russia, the church survived only for a few years. It was closed in 1930. The building was demolished and never rebuilt. The history of the church in Temirkhan-Shura should be investigated not only in the context of the history of Catholicism in Dagestan or the activity of Poles in this region but also through the prism of Russian imperialism because it was the latter that made both the Caucasus and a significant part of Poland subordinated to the rule of the tsar as part of the Russian empire.

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