The article considers the problem of experiencing cultural and social trauma among believers using the example of localized cases. The subject of research is the experience of transmitting traumatic information between generations of believers. The main research question is to determine the role of religion as a regulatory institution in the process of perception and interpretation of the negative experience of the past. The research field includes the region of the Western Urals, which is characterized by both a multi-confessional nature and a significant number of families affected by political persecution. The object of the study were believers of the Muslim community, as well as the churches of the so-called classic Pentecostals and Initiative Baptists (“Separated Brotherhood”) who were persecuted during the Khrushchev’s policy of pressure on religion. The method of collecting information was a semi-standardized interview.  Representatives of the second and third generations of believers were selected as respondents, whose older relatives became the objects of oppression by society. The emphasis in obtaining information was placed on the level of emotional involvement of respondents in events that are separated by a significant time interval, as well as the level of correlation with them and options for assessing for themselves and relatives what had happened. The specificity of the believers' perception of the traumatic experience was determined and mechanisms for its provision at the collective level were established. In the course of the study, the concept of trauma was taken out of the field of interpretation for all believer’s communities as belittled by the religious consciousness. The most significant indicators of self-identification that determine the strategies for social behavior in the presence of traumatic experience were established.