Abstract. Based on archival and published sources, the article analyzes the composition of the first officially approved lists of monuments of Soviet Russia taken under state protection. The analysis is carried out in order to verify the thesis that the ideological attitudes of the Soviet state regarding the implementation of the policy of militant atheism did not find their destructive continuation in the state policy for the protection of the most valuable architectural monuments of history and culture and that architectural monuments with a religious component remained the core of the list of cultural heritage monuments that received state protection in Soviet times. Historical, comparative and typological research methods were used in the preparation of the article. Based on the analysis, it was found that historical and cultural monuments with a religious component form the value core of the first lists of monuments of the Soviet state placed under state protection. The appendix to the article contains for the first time the first officially approved list of architectural monuments subject to state protection, the list of 1935.