Over the past 30 years, the Russian Orthodox Church has been collecting information about the new martyrs. This information is stored in the electronic Database «For Christ Victims», which is supported by the staff of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, Moscow. The creator of the Database, Prof. N.E. Emelyanov, also proposed a mathematical method aimed at restoring repression statistics across the country from a relatively small amount of information from the Database. The numbers calculated by N.E. Emelyanov are firmly included in the scientific literature, they are uncritically used by most researchers. The article talks about the dynamics of replenishment of the Database and its current size. In an accessible form, the essence of N.E. Emelyanov’s method is clarified. On the one hand, the framework is outlined in which the use of the Database provides valuable scientific results. On the other hand, the fallacy of N.E. Emelyanov’s method is demonstrated. This implies the inaccuracy of the numbers of repressions that he received, they can differ tens and hundreds of times from the real ones.
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